KOSKINEN'S EARLY JUNE Y2K TOWN HALL MEETINGS
Y2K Czar Pushes 'Community Conversations'
Identifying the nation's smaller communities and local governments as potentially the weakest links in the chain of Year 2000 awareness, President Clinton's Year 2000 czar, John Koskinen, is ready to release a World Wide Web toolkit of best practices for communities to use as they near the millennial date change.
In early June, officials from the White House's Year 2000 office will begin traveling to communities to promote town hall-like meetings to convene local officials, citizens and service providers for discussions on potential Year 2000 failures.
civic.com
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Montgomery County, MD 8-page Y2K Preparedness Ad Insert in Gazette
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Montgomery county is adjacent to Washington D.C.
I have been talking to those I work with concerning y2k since last August. I have lived
with much good natured kidding about it for months.In addition to the Washington Post,
we have a number of other newspapers. One is the Gazette. When I returned from lunch
today there was an 8 page advertising supplement from this paper sitting on my desk.
This was paid for by the county. The first full page is color with the county seal, a letter
from the County Executive, and a picture of a family planning for "Emergency Events and
Y2K".
Some of the topics covered
- Preparing Your Home for an Emergency
- Your Emergency Preparedness Kit
- Public Emergency Shelters
- What to DO When Electrical Power is Lost
- Keeping Warm
- Keeping Updated in Emergency
- Y2K Contingency Planning A Must
- Y2k Planning at Home
- Y2K Planning at work
- Financial and Personal Records
- Travel
- Testing Your Personal Computer
ETC.
Some of these had other topics included. Now Mongomery County is quite wealthy and
can afford to do this. The Gazette is delivered free to all county residents though they
change the name for each city- Silver Spring Gazette-Rockville Gazette etc.
In spite of all that I read, I am glad this County is out in front as far as cautioning the
people about the issue. One of the great results was the look on the faces of my
co-workers as the light dawned. The decision to prepare and the degree of preparedness
is personal, but the information should be inclusive and disseminated to all.
-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), May 05, 1999
greenspun.com
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TRANSCRIPT: Koskinen remarks to APEC Y2K Symposium
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"growing recognition internationally of the sweep and seriousness of the Year 2000
problem"
"we've told our local governments and our state governments that they need to be
prepared to handle emergencies on their own, since the federal government can't be
everywhere dealing with every problem in light of the large number of problems that we
are likely to have"
"we should also obviously expect that we will have a large number, possibly, of what
would be manageable failures taken one at a time, which will overwhelm the normal
emergency response processes when they happen all at once."
"It's clear that in the absence of information, people will assume the worst. It's also clear
in any country if millions of people change their normal economic activities all at once,
we'll have significant problems, even if all of the systems work just fine. No country can
afford a lack of confidence that leads to runs on their financial institutions, hoarding of
basic supplies, and increasedfear."
"many of them are saying they're simply going to wait, see what breaks, and then they will
fix it once it's broken. We are trying to tell them that that's a very high risk roll of the dice,
because when they go to get the fix, whether it's an upgrade in their software or a
replacement for the software or the hardware, it will be obvious what the fix is, everyone
will know how to do it, but the risk is, they will be at the end of a very long line of other
people who waited to see what broke and then decided to fix it. And the fix will work just
fine when it arrives, but it may not arrive until March, April or May of the year 2000, and
these companies and governments and those who decided to wait and see may find that
they're going to be severely challenged in continuing their operations"
"And the third thing we've asked FEMA to do is make clear to the state and local
emergency managers, as I noted in my presentation, that those local governments should
not assume that the federal government and FEMA will be able to come to their
assistance no matter what their problem is, because we may have so many problems in
localities across the country that we can't be everywhere at once. "
"that's a very important point, because it's not as if we have a choice of either sharing
information and managing it or having no information, because if we don't effectively
collect the information and provide a clear picture and an accurate picture, we're all
going to live with whatever CNN is showing at the time that they decide is an interesting
part of the story that unfolds, or other newspapers, or magazines, and media."
-- ng (can'tprovideemail@none.com), May 04, 1999
usia.gov.
FULL DISCUSSION OF ABOVE:
greenspun.com
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