Mike Hogan '73 owes his career to the fact that a lot of intelligent people
guessed wrong.
Hogan solves the Year 2000 (or Y2K) computer problem — a problem that exists, he says,
because computer programmers once assumed we would have new programs and systems by 2000.
“Unfortunately, everyone had a cavalier attitude about it.”
In the early days of computers, memory was scarce and expensive. Programmers, eager to
save space, used a two-digit rather than a four-digit code for dates. This practice
persisted long after the need for saving space was eliminated, and when the year 2000
arrives, many programs will not be able to distinguish between the years 1900 and 2000.
Hogan, director of application services at DMR Consulting in Jersey City, N.J., studied
programming as an undergraduate and experienced that early memory crunch. “Union's
computer at the time had twenty kilobytes of memory (most new desktops have sixteen to
thirty-two megabytes), so we all ran around with trays of punch cards because we weren't
allowed to use any storage space,” he explains.
After graduation, he began as a junior programmer at Beneficial Management Corp., later
becoming a vice president. In 1996, he joined Trecom (recently acquired by DMR Consulting)
to focus almost exclusively on Year 2000 issues.
At first, companies focused on fixing software. By 1998, the focus broadened to risk
management. Businesses are highly interconnected, and the internal problems at one company
can have a ripple effect — so everyone must anticipate as best they can.
For example, Hogan recently worked with a jail in Florida. The jail's managers were not
worried that cell doors would fly open at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 1999; their
software specialists had fixed that problem. Instead, they feared that trouble might arise
from failures in smaller systems — an air conditioning failure, for example, or caterers
failing to deliver a meal. Hogan introduced contingency plans to deal with these kinds of
problem.
“It has been a real eye-opener to see how closely intertwined businesses are and
how fragile the balance is,” he says. “There are so many different levels and so
many different threads to follow. It never ends; you could drive yourself crazy.”
Is all the talk just hype? Hogan says that there is a reason to take some of the
predictions seriously. “The Year 2000 problem is too difficult and illusive for us to
find everything,” he says.
He predicts that most large companies, especially banks, will be well-prepared for Jan.
1, 2000, but he fears that small and medium-sized companies that do not have the resources
to deal with Y2K may be very hard hit.
He anticipates problems with microchips that exist in many devices we take for granted
— fire and security alarm systems, appliances such as ranges and microwaves, consumer
electronics such as VCRs and stereos, business equipment such as faxes and photocopiers,
and computers in automobiles.
“Literally every device that has a digital panel has an embedded chip,” Hogan
says. “Even if it doesn't appear that it has a calendar, it may use a chip that has
both a clock and a calendar, which is hidden. Devices that you never gave a second
thought to may start failing.”
He sees a potential for temporary failures in electricity, and he plans to buy a
generator. He also recommends:
— not flying at the turn of the century;
— avoiding high rise buildings;
— avoiding mass transit;
— filling prescriptions in December;
— renewing licenses and registrations in December, if possible;
— topping off oil or LP gas levels in December;
— keeping excellent records of bank statements and credit card bills;
— requesting a personal earnings and benefit statement from the Social Security
Administration in 1999;
— having your credit check conducted during 1999 if you plan to finance a large
purchase in 2000;
— and staying healthy; imagine the number of chips in medical diagnostic and
monitoring equipment.
The Year 2000 problem certainly won't end with the stroke of midnight, but Hogan does
anticipate a change in his work after the first few months of 2000. For instance, he's
looking ahead to helping companies manage the transition to the Euro, which is proving to
be an even larger problem for European companies than the Y2K bug.
“A lot of resources have been poured into the Year 2000 problem at the expense of
other projects,” he says. “I expect we will be picking up those other projects
next.”