'A Reader Wonders about
Independent Y2K Auditors for
Public Utilities
Jeff Roberts writes:
I am working with Michigan Senator Mat Dunaskiss, Chairman
of the Michigan Senate Committee on Technology and Energy
on finding ways to oversee the utilities in regards to their
progress toward Y2K compliance. Currently the Michigan
Public Service Commission is only able to send surveys into
the utilities to check their compliance. There is no one at the
MI P.S.C. qualified to go into the utilities to check their
compliance!! AND, our Governor has cut the P.S.C. staffing
from 260 to 160!!
My question for you is this: Is there an example of a utility
anywhere that has used INDEPENDENT Y2K AUDITORS
FOR UTILITIES and if so, could you please send me more
information on the experiences, including contact info.
Your assistance on this would be greatly appreciated and
certainly a central portion of my future Web site.
Thank you in advance!!
Sincerely,
Jeff Roberts
Dick Mills responds:
Unfortunately, the simple answer to your question is no. Few
of the state PUCs are equipped to do anything more than
review rate change requests. The impossibility of them really
overlooking these huge monopolies was one of the arguments
for deregulation ... no monopoly no PUC needed.
There is no Federal or industry oversight agency either to do
the audit.
On the other hand, no industry of any kind has ever faced the
Y2K challenge. The utilities, like everyone else are inventing
as they go along. There are no standards for compliance, nor
any auditors who know what to audit. There is simply no
history of any organization in any country that has been
through the experience to the end, successfully or not. So in
fairness, even if the PUC was more able, nobody could do any
actual audits.
The closest is the banking and security industries. They are
being forced to demonstrate that their stuff works by early
1999 or shut down. That qualifies as an audit. Kind of hard to
apply to other industries like airlines and power where it's not
possible to put up a duplicate of the entire system for testing
purposes.
So what can you do? I too am chairman of a local group: The
Albany NY Capital District Year 2000 interest group. We've
decided to focus on helping our communities and local
organizations prepare for the contingencies of infrastructure
failures. Small-scale preparation is much more effective
dollar-for-dollar than working on fixing the Y2K bugs. We take
the attitude that we really should be ready for events like ice
storms anyhow, so why not prepare now.
We considered and rejected making a campaign to force the
PUC to force the utilities to be more candid. We realized that
the truth is that they don't know the actual status to tell, and
too much activism would just make them defensive.
Not far from here in Northern NY last winter, customers were
without power for up to 10 weeks because of the ice storm.
Worse than anything I expect due to Y2K.
Good Luck
Dick Mills
y2ktimebomb.com |
