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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Mizer who wrote (8982)	10/23/1999 10:12:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

From csy2k on the 10/13/99 meeting of WDCY2K (no deja.com link available yet) So, the crowd was so small that the Dwarf did not have to use elbows or shoulders to get thirds. Cory and I individually had gastric reminders of our age and inability to consume huge amounts of food without penalty. FWIW my take on the night's festivities. Cheers, AGF October 13th the Washington D.C. Year 2000 Group met at Fannie Mae headquarters to hear about international readiness for the century date change. Presenters were: Sr. Carlos Guedes, Chief Information Officer of InfoDevBank (the Latin American arm of the World Bank), Mr. Bruce McConnell, Chairman of the International Y2k group of the United Nations, and a representative from the State Department. I was present for the first two speakers , and left when the State Dept. person said they were looking forward to the challenge of CDC. Extreme Caution Sr. Guedes had presented previously at the Washington Post in December of 1998 (you can get a tape from Cspan of the dialogue, and I am the one who asks the last question of the meeting.)and at that time was optimistic about the ability of Latin America to cope with the century date change problem. As CIO of InfoDevBank Sr. Guedes has traveled extensively thoughout Latin America and Europe. He has met at Cabinet level with many countries. His presentation on the 13th was one of consistent bad news. His closing words were that all should ?exercise extreme caution when dealing with Latin American partners?. His presentation examined the current state of remediation in Latin America but he also stated that Germany was far behind. He stated that the report on Paraguay which appeared on the front page of the Washington Post last week reporting serious problems in Paraguay was overly optimistic. Given that the Washington Post report began it?s report on Paraguay with a scenario of total collapse of the electrical grid, water system, telephone network, rioting and martial law being imposed one wonders about any optimism being possible. (Washington Post, Sunday, October 10th, Page A01) Change of Stance In his presentation of December 1998 Sr. Guedes was quite humorous and was well prepared with amusing anecdotes illustrating the foolishness of Y2k alarmists. Yesterday there were no jokes but rather sarcasm mixed with irony. He began by noting that there were only 54 working days remaining. He said that no country would be finished. Some would be more prepared than others but no one would be ready. He asserted that many countries are insisting on an optimistic ?We will be 100% ready? stance instead of acknowledging that all systems would not be repaired and doing realistic contingency planning for failures. He held up, as a positive example, Jamaica?s Prime Minister, Mr. Powell, who had candidly admitted that Jamaica would not complete the work until 2004. He believed that the insistence on optimism by countries would backfire when failures occurred. Reasons for Pessimism Sr. Guedes was at some pains to clarify the reality in developing countries. He took issue with assessments which downplayed the amount of possible damage in developing countries due to the relative scarcity of computers in the infrastructure. His point was that while there might be fewer computers all of them were critical. He noted the following problems for Latin America. 1. Late and misleading information from vendors. Cf. Infoliant?s recent report that the past month had seen the largest downward revision of software readiness at a time when increased compliancy and repair was expected. 2. In the mainframe world the systems were legacy systems with no documentation. 3. The mainframes themselves were old hardware and the skill sets needed for them were not available due to a ?brain drain? to the United States where the number of H1B visas had been increased to allow foreign programmers easy entry and more salary. 4. In the personal computer area illegal and unregistered software was present in 60% of government offices. Ergo no support or upgrades from software companies. 5. 80% of PC?s were using Windows 3.1 with a small percentage using Windows 95. 6. The PC?s themselves were not compliant with BIOS problems. He was scathing about the dumping of non-compliant computers into developing countries by manufacturers when they discovered their inventory was not Y2k compliant. The number of compliant PC?s discovered after a survey of 14,000 machines was under 1%. 7. Some upgrades and fixes had been offered by Microsoft but the offer was made on CD-ROM media which is not available on the obsolete PC?s in Latin America. 8. The suggestion that governments in Latin America should use the internet to upgrade software and seek information ran headlong into the fact that less than 5% of government offices have any internet access. 9. Lack of money. Only Mexico and Chile had budgeted for Y2k work. 10. Disasters and elections. Honduras has lost 30 years of public works due to Hurricane Mitch. Ecuador lost its coastal fish farming sector to an earthquake last year. Elections have meant the outgoing government has not been concerned and incoming governments have no interest in the issue. 11. Last but not least, he drew attention to the fact that there was no word for procrastination in Spanish. (cont'd in separate post) McConnell Testimony Mr. McConnell repeated his testimony given earlier yesterday to the Senate Special Committee. Some excerpts from that testimony follow while the full testimony can be found at: iy2kcc.org A picture is emerging of a failure scenario that is more complex than single, localized outages. What is likely in countries with numerous Y2K failures is a growing slowdown in commerce as capacity is reduced by a confluence of degraded infrastructure performance and shaky consumer confidence. To the extent that the slowdown is substantial, either in terms of the infrastructures affected or its duration, the performance of marginal businesses and economies will suffer, and so will the portfolios of their stakeholders. While the magnitude of the effects of these various interactions is inherently unpredictable, planners must be ready for both broader and longer disruptions in daily life. Performance degradation, potentially exacerbated by non-Y2K factors, may cascade from one infrastructure to another. Fewer than 80 days remain to make and to test preparations for the date change. Certainly, the analyzing, fixing, and testing of systems must continue, work that will eventually need to be done in any case. And, where contingency and continuity planning is not already priority one, it must become so. But an impact that is chronic -- broad and long -- rather than acute, requires a special emphasis in making preparations. Below are additional actions that the IY2KCC believes are needed. The first two recommendations require governmental action, and include a brief description of current IY2KCC activities to promote such action. 1. To promote public confidence, governments and private organizations should clearly and openly tell their constituents what to expect in terms of how well critical infrastructures will function, including expected service levels for the date change period.12 They should also generally describe their contingency plans. To further promote transparency, the IY2KCC will update its public assessment of national government information dissemination efforts in mid-October and mid-November, giving special emphasis to contingency planning. 2. Governments and private organizations should avoid overreacting to the inevitable continuing uncertainty about other countries' readiness, and, instead, make plans to share event information and where necessary to provide assistance in restoring service in critical infrastructures beyond their own boundaries. The IY2KCC will work to establish an international framework for the response to serious Y2K failures. This mechanism will rely first on mutual-aid networks of infrastructure operators and equipment suppliers to promote market-based responses to service outages. This work is being coordinated in particular with the governments of the G-8 nations. 3. Infrastructure operators should be ready to interrupt the propagation of failure from one infrastructure to another by sharing information and by selective, temporary isolation of disrupted areas. 4. Critical service providers should have additional customer service and management staff on hand during and after the date change. 5. Y2K crisis management centers should plan to operate for weeks, not days. 6. Public affairs organizations should explicitly prepare for a wide variety of event scenarios. Conclusions 1. Sr. Guedes and Mr. McConnell agree about the reality of failures with Sr. Guedes? view having more acute factors at rollover. Neither is the bearer of good news, and one must , I think, give more credence to Sr. Guedes based upon his much longer involvement in the issue in the wider arena. 2. The likelihood of governments adopting transparency concerning Y2k information and contingency plans is extremely remote. 3. The public stance that the duration of the event requires planning for weeks of crisis management makes preparation important. We are begining to stop speaking about a three day storm. 4. Our global inter-dependencies ensure that no country will be exempt from issues arising from the century date change. /gomer mode on Surprize, surprize, surprize/gomer off -----------------------------------------------------------