Friday, July 7, 2017

White House Axes Ancient Y2K Regulations

Seventeen years later.


Y2K, the cyber-apocalypse that wasn't actually that bad, may have came and went back in 2000, but it's been echoing through the federal government ever since. Now, seventeen years later, the Trump administration is clearing out the regulations that still remain in place nearly two decades after they stopped being useful.


Y2K spurred a number of paperwork requirements for federal agencies to ensure they were ready for the date rollover bug. After 2000 passed mostly uneventfully, the regulations stayed in place. The actual amount of wasted time on them might not actually be that high—it's very easy to brush off these obviously out-of-date requirements, even though they may technically still be in place. Linda Springer, a senior advisor for the White House's Office of Management and Budget told Bloomberg that the regulations are frequently ignored.

Still, there's no reason to still have them on the books. At least, not unless they might be useful when 2999 rolls around.

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