Just curious. Has anyone run across any U.S. publications summarizing what Koskinen said at APEC Summit in New Zealand recently? I saw Ron Reece came upon a Singapore article from Associated Press. Have any U.S. publications picked up on the Associated Press info? Very puzzling. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places.
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"...we have asked every federal agency to produce a contingency plan in case there's a failure in any of its basic systems, because even with the best of work, and the most thorough testing, no one can guarantee that every system is going to work. In fact, it might be easier to guarantee that some systems we know, even with the best of efforts, will not work." ...
"In the United States, for example, we expect that our basic infrastructure will hold, that our electric power grids will function, that our telecommunications systems will work effectively, and that our banking systems will not have major difficulties."
"But at the same time, we expect ...that there were risks of failures at the local level, where smaller companies working in the critical infrastructure areas or some of our local governments, will either take no action, or not successful action and, therefore, are at risk of failure as we move into the Year 2000."
[According to Committee on Infrastructure Protection - "local" is defined as "statewide". Call their 800 Y2K line for verification: 1-888-USA-4-Y2K (1-888-872-4925). Maybe they've changed their definition over past few weeks.]
"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."
"… And the third thing we've asked FEMA to do is make clear to the state and local emergency managers ...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. "
"I think we need to begin to focus not only on individual contingency plans, but what are our across border contingency plans, how will we deal with the failure of information technology in customs, in telecommunications, in electric power grids."
"One of the advantages we have with the Year 2000 problem as opposed to most natural disasters is that we know what the problem is, we know when it's going to occur, so we can plan accordingly and be prepared, and being prepared means not only working on fixing our system, not only on having adequate contingency plans, but having appropriate emergency response plans so that we know how to work together through that transition time to deal with whatever problems we all confront."
"We are then concerned, though, because of the wide potential nature of the problems we'll deal with, that we need to have a more formal coordination mechanism in the federal government than we usually set up, which is why we're creating what I call our Year 2000 Emergency Response Process, which is bringing in everyone in the government who has an emergency response capacity or responsibility, and making sure that they together now start to plan for the challenges they are going to face, what kind of resources are likely to be in most demand. We have to start making choices about where to provide resources, what will our basis for those decisions be, and how can we make sure that we have the same information in the hands of all of our emergency responders as we go forward."
"... Then we would move into crisis management, and the Council and FEMA and the other emergency responders, as we move through the last quarter of this year, will begin to prepare themselves to be available and ready to monitor whatever the difficulties are internationally and domestically, and respond accordingly." ...
"Our present plan, in a preliminary way, is that we will provide every four hours, starting at noon on Friday, December 31st, public updates of all the information we have of what the status of the year 2000 transition is ... that information will be in the public domain because, again, we think it's important for the public to know everything we know."
usia.gov
USIS Washington File [United States Information Services]
Cheryl
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