It's nowhere near as bad as Y2K. Y2K potentially affected just about everything. Everything with a date calculation. Everything that accepted or printed a date.
Far fewer programs process SSN's. Anecdotally, from personal experience, I cannot tell you how many programs I have written that involved a date that might have been affected by the Y2K issue. But I do believe I have never written or worked on a program that processed SSN's. It would be big, but not as big as Y2K. It would only affect the US and the few non-US systems that process SSN's. Y2K was global. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Tony Thigpen Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 2:58 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Here we go again Expanding the SSN or changing it to alpha-numeric would be another Y2K. While the private sector might get it done, there is no way that the government sector could get it done in 20 years with all the red-tape they have to go though. Tony Thigpen Timothy Sipples wrote on 4/22/20 1:43 AM: > Mark Jacobs wrote: >> The Social Security Administration does not reuse Social Security >> numbers. It has issued over 450 million since the start of the >> program, and at a use rate of about 5.5 million per year. It says >> it has enough to last several generations without reuse or changing >> the number of digits. > > The Social Security Administration could easily give 20 years of advance > warning before expanding their number space if they wish. They've got > several options before that far distant future, such as: > > 1. Allowing capital letters except those that can be confused with numeric > digits. That'd likely mean excluding B, D, F, G, I, L, O, Q, S, T, U, Y, > and Z if they want to be maximally cautious. That still leaves 13 letters > available, or 14 if they want to include the symbol representing the > artist formerly known as Prince. :-) They'll also probably have some > placement exclusions to avoid spelling out any words. Even with these > restrictions, the character space is vast. > > 2. Alternatively, and in an overlapping period, some brand new digital > identity scheme. > > - - - - - - - - - - > Timothy Sipples > I.T. Architect Executive > Digital Asset & Other Industry Solutions > IBM Z & LinuxONE > - - - - - - - - - - > E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
