Comment: |
At the October summit of representatives of 40 states and 22 Federal agencies, this problem received a lot of attention.
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Today's working summit was focused on the subject of state and federal "data interfaces," which allow the accurate exchange of computer files according to agreed-upon procedures by all parties sharing data. The Year 2000 has the potential to upset those procedures by changing the character of some data elements within those files. Unless both parties involved in a data exchange are arranging their data in identical patterns, information routinely transmitted between computers could be misunderstood at the receiving end, garbling files and introducing errors into electronic records. In some cases, computers could reject data transmissions entirely.
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