AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN Y2K!!! - C-SPAN / CSIS Conference: TRANSCRIPTS!
I made clippings of some interesting statements; but the whole transcript is extremely interesting. This is 'current y2k thinking at the highest level in corporations and federal government in the US of A, IMO
John
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SENATOR BENNETT
'We went to the Finance Committee and said, "Important as these IRS reforms are, you must postpone the effective date of these reforms until after January of 2000, because you cannot simultaneously try to reprogram the computers at the IRS to take care of these different approaches this bill mandates, and reprogram the computers to solve Y2K. You've got to see to it that the Y2K problem is solved first before you address all of these others."'
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All right. Now, these are the seven areas, in priority level, that I think must be addressed with respect to Y2K. Number 1, utilities. And this means the power grid. Power must be available, even if every one of your computers is Y2K compliant.
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The super tankers that come from the Far East that bring us the oil that we need are also subject to Y2K embedded chip and programming problems. So transportation as a whole is a vast area that we have to talk about and talk about how it cuts across organizational lines.
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So I summarize the assignment that I have as Chairman of the Senate Committee this way. Telling my colleagues, "We must be Paul Revere. We must tell everyone that the British indeed are coming." Or, in this case, Y2K is coming
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MR. de JAGER:
AT&T isn't spending $500 million because they listened to someone at a podium stating that they have a problem. They are spending that amount of money because they went out, looked, and went, "Oh my God. We have a problem that's going to cost $500 million to fix." The code is broken, and it's going to take a lot of effort to fix it.
And then, finally, point number 4 is that we have a problem even bigger than the software problem. It's bigger. We have no idea how much bigger. We have no idea, really, how much the impact is going to be. We have an embedded system problem. And anybody who says that we don't have enough evidence about embedded system problems should pay attention to General Motors.
They are not a consulting group, I'm sure you're aware. They described their problem as catastrophic. Their words, not mine. They took a plant which they were going to shut down, and instead of shutting it down they rolled the clock forward. And when they rolled the clock forward, their assembly line -- the robotics -- stopped. They just stopped.
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I have a call out to two individuals -- Mr. Al Gore, the self-appointed technological leader of America, has been seen nowhere on this battlefront. And it's about time he stops focusing on Internet in the high schools and starts focusing on computing in corporate America.
And the other one is a plea to one of the individuals who everybody says will solve it, and I hear this daily from CFOs who should know better. "Bill Gates will solve this." Well, Bill Gates says it isn't a problem. Two years ago he said his products weren't affected. Now he admits they are. He could do a tremendous amount of good to come out and basically say, "This is an issue. We have a deadline. We have the tools to fix it. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work."
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DR. YARDENI
So I am an optimist, but I am also an alarmist on the year 2000 problem. I think that there is at least a 60 percent probability now of a global recession as severe as '73/'74. The reason I use that analogy -- it's really the only one that's available to me that I think makes sense.
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Could it be six months of major disruptions to our computer systems? Absolutely. Could it be an entire year? Absolutely
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Today, Asia is toast. In the year 2000, Asia will be burnt toast. In Asia, they have a year 1998 problem. Most companies have a 90-day business plan of how they're going to stay in business for the next 90 days. They are doing this month by month over in Asia. They have totally been distracted and resourced away from dealing with the year 2000 problem
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The General Motors statement was picked up. It was in Fortune magazine April 27th. It was a wonderful article about -- well, not wonderful, but it was a good article, nothing is wonderful about this issue -- about the year 2000 problem in manufacturing. And they quoted the Chief Information Officer worldwide of General Motors saying there are "catastrophic problems" in every GM plant.
I went to the SEC filing, both annual and quarterly this year, for GM, and the word "catastrophic" didn't appear once. I mean, there's a complete disconnect between what the CIO of GM said and what the annual and quarterly report said
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So what's really missing here -- and I think it's already been said -- is leadership on this issue. We desperately need leadership. We desperately need to have leaders tell the public what's really going on
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I think by around October the market is going to start figuring this thing out.
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Then, about two, three months ago, a lot of these institutions started calling me up and said, "You know, we generally like most of your work, but this Y2K stuff, we've been just chucking it out." Okay? "Would you do us a favor and send us everything you've written on the subject?"
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MR. SIMPSON
When you move this way through, come 2000 you could have a scenario -- and when you look at this, it's the Soviet Union in the '80s -- where there's plentiful supply of food in the fields, but you can't get it from the fields to the towns to feed the population. This is not a way-out, whacko scenario. This is for real.
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I met with John Koskinen of the White House yesterday, and we were running through the problems that he had. And the problems that he had are the same as Senator Bennett said -- no one is telling 100 percent of the truth. Everyone is frightened about their stock position
For a copy of the tapes of the event, please contact the C-SPAN archives at 1-800-277-2698.
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Y2K Conference Transcripts
On Tuesday, June 2, CSIS held a conference analyzing the Y2K, or Millennium Bug, crisis. Due to the overwhelming response we have received, a Y2K website has been created to offer information about the crisis and about the recent conference. The proceedings of the event have been transcribed and are now available. If you would like to acquire a copy of the tape as covered by the C-SPAN network, (tape id number 106506), please call the C-SPAN archives at 1-800-277-2698. Finally, for more information, visit the Y2K website regularly, or send us an email.
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