In 1998, Switzerland appointed a Y2K delegate to raise public awareness, promote the exchange of experiences, and carry out situation analyses.
Keystone-SDA
Twenty-five years ago, the world was preparing for a catastrophe: the millennium bug. The idea that computers around the world could fail at midnight on December 31, 1999 put many on alert. In the end, however, not much went wrong.
The reason for the panic was a seemingly simple programming decision from the early days of information technology in the 1960s and 1970s. Memory space in computers was expensive and limited back then, which is why many programmers decided to store only the last two digits of the year.
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So “1970” simply became “70”. This efficiency measure seemed logical at the time, but posed a problem as the year 2000 approached: computer programmes could interpret “00” as 1900, which would lead to incorrect calculations and system crashes. The consequences seemed unimaginable.
Experts warned that critical systems such as flight control software, banking systems and power stations could be affected by this problem. Stock market crashes, global economic crises and nuclear meltdowns were feared as a result. There was even talk of imminent war.
Elaborate preparations
To prevent a catastrophe, companies and governments around the world spent an estimated CHF500 billion ($553 billion) to prepare computer systems for the date change. Programmes were corrected, software was adapted, companies replaced their entire IT systems, administrations replaced their systems, for example, at the civic registration office, and Swiss telecoms firm Swisscom recommended the replacement of individual telephone exchanges.
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In 1998, Switzerland appointed a Y2K delegate to raise public awareness, promote the exchange of experiences, and carry out situation analyses. To fulfill his tasks, Ulrich Grete, then CEO of bank UBS, had his own budget of around CHF8 million a year and a staff of around ten people at his disposal.
Grete told the news agency SDA shortly before the turn of the year that an enormous amount of work had been done to secure basic services in the areas of transportation, telecommunications, electricity, health, food and banking. He ruled out disasters.
The night of truth
Many Swiss people spent New Year’s Eve itself working. Specialists at the Swisscom operations centre in Zurich monitored the network, staff were on duty at banks and hospitals, and the United Nations set up an operations centre in Geneva to ensure intervention in the event of any humanitarian problems around the world.
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There was an initial sigh of relief when no difficulties were reported from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region, where the New Year began several hours earlier than in Europe.
There was also no chaos in Switzerland. The computers at the nuclear power plants coped with the new year without any glitches, as did the other electricity producers. No computer crashes were recorded at the Swiss federal emergency command centre in Bern either.
The damage caused by the millennium bug was therefore largely limited to the costs of preparations.
Translated from German with DeepL/gw
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