Year 2000: Looking for Fixes at the SBA Web Site
There has been no letup in the doomsday forecasts surrounding the Year 2000 computer bug (see BW--Mar. 2, "Zap! How the Year 2000 bug will hurt the economy"). As many foresee it, the Y2K programming glitch will mangle bank records, halt office elevators, and strand airplanes in midflight. The total cost to the economy? A jolting $115 billion, according to researchers at Standard & Poor's DRI. Such dire predictions are likely to put a scare into small businesses, many of whom -- like the rest of the business world -- depend on often-antiquated computer systems to keep things humming.
But unlike their larger counterparts, small companies have neither the cash nor the personnel to throw at the problem. As high-cost programmers descend on large corporate and government customers, most small firms will be left fending for themselves.
With that do-it-yourself spirit in mind, the Small Business Administration recently launched a Year 2000 page on the Internet -- www.sba.gov/y2k. The site is intended to serve as a resource for the nation's 23 million small companies by acting as a clearinghouse for material that will specifically help small fry avert computer meltdown.
What does the SBA have to offer? Not much. The Y2K area is plodding and directionless, combining general Y2K education (helpful only for the novice user) with internal SBA preparedness reports. What's missing is any real meat: specific, technical advice on how to get a computer system in proper pre-millennial shape. Instead, visitors must sift through pages of vague to-do lists, learn the details of the SBA's own Y2K processes (if you care, 69.7% of the agency's computer code is now Y2K compliant), and troll through a series of toothless press releases. It's all a far cry from what SBA chief Aida Alvarez bills as a "gateway to a vast resource of business advice."
There are a few diamonds here -- if you can find them. Hidden at the bottom of one checklist (www.sba.gov/y2k/cdc2.html) are directions for running a test that determines whether an individual PC is Year 2000-compliant (Apple Macintoshes are generally immune). And weaving your way through the SBA site links turns up some nifty tools, particularly one offered by the National Software Testing Laboratories (a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, which owns Business Week) that automatically examines a computer's internal clock (www.nstl.com/html/ymark_2000.html).
The SBA's vast area of nongovernmental hotlinks will present a challenge to most small-business users. While helpful to someone who wants a general understanding of the problem, they don't tend to be useful to a small company. That means finding directly applicable information may take hours of Net browsing. Some of the better sites for small biz in this guide include those offered by the Information Technology Association of America (www.itaa.org/year2000.htm) and the list of local users clubs compiled at IT2000, a national Y2K bulletin board (it2000.com/usergroups/usa.html).
As for the SBA site, the agency claims it's a "work in progress" that will evolve over time. Browsing through its meager pages, however, one realizes just how isolated small companies may feel when they confront the nasty risks of the Year 2000 bug. The millennium is just 20 months away: For small business, now might be a good time for prayer.
By Dennis Berman, Business Week Online
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