The year 2000 is just over a year away, and the Iowa State University Administrative Data Processing (ADP) staff is working hard to make sure they are ready for anything.

Wayne Ostendorf, director of the ADP center and associate professor of computer science, said he is confident the staff will be prepared.

With more than 7,400 computer programs, 6,000 daily operations and 100 billion characters to check, there is a lot of work to be done, Ostendorf said.

“The way you do this is you make an assessment of what you have, and then you take it from there,” he said.

The center began addressing the problem about 10 years ago and has made incredible progress. Ostendorf said more than 95 percent of the center’s programs are compliant, up from 34 percent one year ago.

“We started looking at them to see how the code dealt with the year, and because we’re a very highly standardized shop and we write all are own programs by standards, we have a better handle on it than most shops,” he said.

In addition to the many analysts and programmers working on the problem, Ostendorf said three to four students regularly help with the coding.

As far as the central administration system hardware goes, the ADP center is on target, Ostendorf said. The center has acquired upgrades and installed new releases on the equipment, and most is year 2000 compliant.

The main problem left for the ADP center is the testing of the programs.

“What we’re doing is setting up a separate system where we essentially roll the clock forward, and that … can be very expensive,” Ostendorf said.

The center expects to have the testing for its programs completed by June 1999 and the hardware done by July 1, 1999, he said.

“As a university, we’re much better off than most, because we started early,” Ostendorf said.

Another drawback for ADP is that with its analysts working on the year 2000 problem, it leaves less time to develop new systems.

“[The year 2000 project] doesn’t have any added value, so with all the work you put into it, it doesn’t give you anything new,” Ostendorf said. “People don’t get excited about putting their money and time into it.”

Although the year 2000 is more than a year away, it is already affecting some companies, according to an article in the Aug. 24 issue of Computerworld.

A distributor in the United Kingdom threw away thousands of dollars in food because the system thought that they had already expired, and an automobile manufacturer had to halt production because the computer thought it was time to replace some components in the assembly line, according to the article.

ADP also is helping the university to ensure that the various departments throughout the campus are ready for the year 2000. The center has held seminars and maintains a Web site, www.y2k.iastate.edu, devoted to helping the departments.

The Web site contains a checklist for year 2000 coordinators as well as links to many computer manufacturers, software vendors and the Central Year 2000 site. The site also provides a link to the Microcomputer Center, which discusses the computers and software that are year 2000 compatible.

“Our main objective is to not interrupt the services of students,” Ostendorf said.