On Sept. 10th, the "House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology" (chaired by Steven Horn) published a chart entitled "High Impact Federal Programs' Year 2000 Readiness" :

http://www.house.gov/reform/gmit/y2k/990910HighImpact.PDF

(see also : http://www.house.gov/reform/gmit/y2k/ )

It is an Adobe Acrobat file though so I can't copy it well and retain the formating. You need the Acrobat reader installed on your machine to read it properly.

Among many other notables it says the following "Agency" is NOT READY:

Lead Agency:

ENERGY

Program:

Federal Electric Power Generation and Delivery

Additional Program Partners:

Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Tennessee Valley Authority, industry, North American Electric Reliability Council, Industry

My Questions:

Q1) Does this mean that the committee thinks at least one of the "Additional Program Partners" are NOT READY ? -- I think the obvious answer is "yes", hence then the follow up question -- Why does the House committee think they are not ready and have they applied the same criterion to power companies who NERC says ARE READY ? (perhaps since they are not "Federal" they were not investigated through the same means).

Q2) Why is NERC listed in the "Additional Program Partners" list?

.....

The following two paragraphs are copied from:

http://www.house.gov/reform/gmit/y2k/990910.htm

"For more than three years, our subcommittees have prodded agencies in the executive branch of the federal government to prepare their critical computer systems for the Year 2000. Now, only 112 days remain until Jan. 1, 2000 - and the job is still not completed. Progress during this quarter, which ended on August 15, is discouraging. The flurry of activity we saw among federal agencies earlier this year has slowed to a snail's pace.

"Today, we will present two sets of grades. As we have done on eight previous occasions, the first set of grades rates the 24 largest executive branch agencies on the progress they have made in preparing their mission-critical computer systems for the Year 2000. The second set of grades, which are new, will assess the Year 2000 readiness of the Federal Government's 43 high impact programs."

===============================================================

I referenced this under the thread entitled:

"DOE gets a "C" or is it a "B" - Horn report Sept 10 (Tim Castleman, 1999-09-11)"

However I didn't put the links there because Tim had them at the beginning of the thread. The stuff I wrote was formatted strage and hard to read - perhaps that is why there has been no response there, I hope this has come through in an easier to understand way. I think this is worthy of discussion here because a "official government source" appears to be saying significant power providers are NOT READY.

Last Question: Didn't I see from another source that "Tennessee Valley Authority" is supposed to be "Ready" ???

I am obviously confused.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 1999

Answers

"For more than three years, our subcommittees have prodded agencies in the executive branch of the federal government to prepare their critical computer systems for the Year 2000. Now, only 112 days remain until Jan. 1, 2000 - and the job is still not completed. Progress during this quarter, which ended on August 15, is discouraging. The flurry of activity we saw among federal agencies earlier this year has slowed to a snail's pace.

Dennis, I think this one simple statement should answer most of your questions (rhetorical though they may be). As Tom Benjamin said some time back, "This should not have been a race." We should have had some level of comfort by now that either things have been properly dealt with, or they haven't. We're receiving no assurances, and more importantly, no guidance on dealing with a potentially difficult situation.

With respect to TVA, yes, they're supposed to be "ready" (according to the latest NERC report...)

First and foremost, TVA is a government agency that is as broad and deep to the electric industry, metaphorically speaking, as Floyd is to hurricanes. Never lose sight of that simple fact. Plan accordingly.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 1999

Gee, Rick, now I've got to go back and keep preparing. There was no response to the original thread for a while, and it was rather reassuring. When I came back and saw your rather stark and startling post, I was kind of thinking that maybe Marianne had found the shift key on her computer. ;) It's bad enough when the non-techies among us post our albeit-somewhat-informed opinions, but when YOU post something like this, I don't have a choice but to prepare some more. (Sigh) Twenty quarts of tomatoes and sauce yestarday. Another bushel today...

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999

Er, make that "yesterday". It's bad enough that I'm doing a "redneck" thing like preparing for Y2K, but all of a sudden I can't spell, either. Reminds me of one of our family's jokes: "I'm so glad I is home-schooled, 'cause I ain't iggernint."

-- Anonymous, September 15, 1999