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

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (3542)	2/1/1999 12:19:00 PM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Alastair--Too soon to tell under which category the Nebraska water provider story might fall. I suspect that an embedded systems problem that may affect approx. 1,000 other similar systems will not go unnoticed for long. The fact that the company conducting the testing was in fact named in the article leads me to believe that there's more to this than rumor or innuendo. I'll be checking the discussion forum on the awwa site this week for any mention. As an industry professional perhaps you could make some inquires. Don't expect the company in question to be entirely forthcoming with details as there may be liability issues. I know there is enough concern among the provider industry associations to raise doubts as to the overall effectiveness of remediation efforts and contingency planning to date. Have you read either of the surveys? Since many water and sewer providers are not public companies information has been difficult if not impossible to come by. (In the southern US many sewage providers are small Mom and Pop owned companies that have little awareness. I clearly remember that bit of info from the first sewer provider article I read. It came from the Charlotte News-Observer in the summer of 1998. The reporter focused on the efforts of some CEOs in Research Triangle Park to ascertain the remediation efforts of their provider to no avail. When they finally got a response it a amounted to something like, "Y2k? What's that you say?" There was some concern that they might have to fund the remediation out of their own pockets so their companies could stay in business due to awareness, cost and time constraints on the part of the provider.) Since awwa and amsa released industry preparedness surveys I have seen more info in the past few months than I have the previous year. Both industries will have to do a better job than the surveys indicate before they earn my trust. As we both know the creation of sanitary systems has done more to lengthen life expectancy than the advent of antibiotic drugs. If the integrity of sanitary systems is at risk so is public health. In a public health game of "you bet your life" the ultimate question will be, "How lucky do you feel on 01/01/00?" I'm certain some will never ask that question when they turn on the tap or flush the toilet because it never ocurred to them, they assumed they knew the answer, they were told not to concern themselves or they preferred not to think about it. Your complacency in this matter could be hazardous to your health. "flatsville"

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (3542)	2/1/1999 1:44:00 PM
From: C.K. Houston	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9818

"About a third of the [World] Bank's projects are considered to be at high risk for Y2K disruptions. These are mostly in finance, power and communications. Once we have all of these assessments in, we'll be looking at this to see if there are actions we or others should be taking." ======================================================= Jan 26 Press Briefing on Y2K Problem - FROM WORLD BANK MINUTES ... In the few remaining months before the year 2000, we must direct our attention to the risks being taken by countries that have not yet begun to fix the year 2000 problem -- the risk of crippling economies, the risk of social chaos, the loss of foreign investment and the risk of creating unintended international consequences. In fact, the year 2000 problem has already started. We are seeing problems of incorrect projections in loan payments, lost patient records and prematurely cancelled orders for supplies, such as food, oil, machine parts and microcomputer chips, just to name a few. There is no consensus on how bad the Y2K problem will be or how much it will cost to fix. What we do know is that most developing countries are unprepared for the looming problem ... The World Bank's Year 2000 Program has three elements. The first is our outreach effort to developing countries. The second is ensuring our own portfolio of investment projects is secure. And the third is making sure our own internal systems and infrastructure don't have problems ... We [World Bank portfolio] have about 1,700 projects in various stages of implementation ... WORLD BANK MINUTES (TRANSCRIPT) worldbank.org Cheryl P.S. John Mansfield - thanks for the link.