Many foreigners are discreetly, but audibly, crowing about how we in the United States were so obsessed and spent so much money on Y2K while they had equally good results and were much more relaxed about it. I am convinced that we will have the last laugh.
As a result of that so-called obsession, I believe we have strengthened the underpinnings of our already impressive level of productivity improvement. Among larger companies and public institutions, there is a new awareness in senior management of the possibilities for improving their operations through more effective technology and systems management. An example would be those old, inefficient legacy systems we just had to rework.