Has anyone here read the info at http://www.alliant-energy.com/alliant/y2k/brochure/printable.htm Seems they are being a little more honest than others. Comments? Sharon

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1998

Answers

Refreshing. Maybe a geekster snuck it by the horn hairs.

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1998

Hello, Sharon. Alliant is certainly doing a better job of educating their customers about Y2K than most. In searching for the actual information given about their own status, however, the facts we can glean from their customer notification are: They are investigating 13 different potential date problems. They state "Our information technology staff has been working on the company's computer systems for the past two years." (That's good. Information technology staffs are supposed to work on a company's computer systems. I guess we're to assume this means they have been working on Y2K problems for two years - but it doesn't say that.) It does state that Alliant has a team of employees dedicated to working on the year 2000 problem. They have completed an inventory on the company's computers and micro-chip driven devices, and these total more than 170,000. Notice that this 170,000 is NOT the number of chips, but computers and chip driven devices. They are also "testing equipment containing embedded microchips and developing plans to fix any potential problems."

Passing by the 800,000 meters, of which Alliant has found less than 4% have embedded microchips (only about 30,000) what we know from this article is: Assuming they did start work two years ago, it's taken those two years to finish their inventory. They are in the process of testing equipment (I assume this means testing to find the problems) and developing plans to fix problems. Note they don't say they have FIXED the problems, just that they're testing and developing plans...

They've sent a questionaire to their vendors and suppliers and they plan to be Y2K "ready" by mid-1999. They don't say if they got any responses to their questionaire, or if they did, what those responses were. They don't define "ready", but other definitions of "ready" versus "compliant" boil down to being hopeful you'll have enough critical systems fixed to be able to stay in business and fix the rest later.

It's generally accepted that inventory (assessment) is at most 15% of a compliance project, and this is the only thing they state they are finished with over the last two years. I'm glad they've seen fit to help their customers be aware of the potential problems, because from my point of view Alliant may be running out of time. They also say, "we can't guarantee the preparedness of the companies we depend on". It was nice that they thought to advise any customers choosing to buy a generator to make sure it's Y2K compliant and that the "fuel source will be readily available". I'm not sure whether I should be laughing or crying....

-- Anonymous, October 31, 1998

Bonnie, I am a year 2000 project manager consulting to Fortune 100 companies, I hear this type of "legalese" all day long. You are right on top of things in your analysis of this. This is aexactly the way they talk and your exactly right in what they really mean. Good Job!

-- Anonymous, November 02, 1998

Alliant has been more forthcoming with their customers (and the media and their state government) than most. There's a link in the euy2k.com newsroom to a recent newspaper report about a meeting that Alliant had with the Wisconsin PUC. It contains some rather sobering quotes and statements.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1998

One of the things I admire about Alliant is that the VP there in charge of Y2K was referred to (not directly quoted) in this section of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on Oct 15:

"...the state needs to work with local governments to develop a network of "safe havens" where people can go if essential services such as power, gas and water are disrupted by year 2000 computer problems.

"Knowing there will be a place in their community where they can go to be warm and have food and water if something goes wrong will allow people to focus on what they can do in their own households to prepare for those problems, Wegner said."

Alliant has been pretty upfront about the potential for problems in its area. You have to admire that (at least I do). It's a whale of a lot more than other companies who may very well share Alliant's concern, but won't say so publicly.

Drew Parkhill/CBN News

PS: although it wasn't, & isn't, my intention to plug our site when I dropped in tonight (after election night), I will mention, for the sake of clarity, that the link to the above Milwaukee JS story has expired. However, the excerpts from it are still active on our site at this link, if anyone wants to check it out.

http://www.cbn.org/y2k/insights.asp?file=981016f.htm

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1998

Drew,

The links to the Milwaukee J/S articles on Alliant power company are still active (they just went to archive). There's a whole slew of articles (chronologically ordered below):

http://www.jsonline.com/archive/oct98/news/1007y2k.asp http://www.jsonline.com/archive/oct98/news/1015y2k.asp http://www.jsonline.com/archive/oct98/news/1008elec.asp http://www.jsonline.com/wi/981015stateyear2000computer.asp http://www.jsonline.com/wi/981030utilitiesy2kcostsmigh.asp

Hope this helps.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1998