Some good info.................

Any feedback?

http://www.zdnet.com/zdy2k/1999/01/5562.html

-- Anonymous, January 19, 1999

Answers

I'm speculating about the relationship, if any, between the information in the NERC report and the alarming statements made last week by S. Dakota Gov. Janklow. Although I have read only summaries of the NERC report, I have the feeling that nothing in that report, or the data made available by the utilities to produce it, would lead a governor to make those statements. Is there anything in there that would lead unequivocally to the conclusion that, if Jan, 2000 came today, not only would there be problems, but S. Dakota's grid would go down? Which leads to the obvious question, "Where is Gov. Janklow getting his information?" There is only one type of organization I can think of that would have inside information on more than one electric utility: government intelligence organizations. Any other possibilities?

-- Anonymous, January 19, 1999

I guess I missed it. What did the Gov of SD have to say about the grid.NERC? Where is this info?

-- Anonymous, January 19, 1999

You can find it in the Yourdon TB2000 forum at http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0000td.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 1999

Taz,

Here, this is from our website last night, at:

http://www.cbn.org/y2k/insights.asp?file=990118l.htm

-------------------------------

South Dakota Governor: Y2K May Be "Absolute Catastrophe" Or "Not Much Of Anything"

http://www.state.sd.us/governor/FILES/sos99c/transcript.htm

(South Dakota Governor's Office)

If every Governor in the country was this blunt in their State of the State address, we'd all be a lot better off. This is South Dakota Governor William Janklow from Wednesday, January 13 (quotes follow):

The unknown can be as dangerous as what we know. I've deliberately bit my lip for the last two years on this subject matter, and now we are down to 12 months. We face an absolute catastrophe in the world because of this problem. On the other hand, it may not be much of anything. The biggest problem is, we don't know. But don't take anybody lightly that tells you that the roof could come falling in. I can tell you today that if year 2000 hit today, the electric grid that serves South Dakota would go down. It would not stay up, and don't believe anybody that tells you it would. Now, by the year 2000, it might, but today it will go down. Year 2000 doesn't come in the middle of June when the temperature is decent. It's coming on December 31 in the middle of winter.

We can't take the risk that our telephone and telecommunications companies won't operate. We can't take that risk. They have to function. We must have hospitals where they've got electricity and gas. It has to work. There's no program Bill Janklow or you folks together could implement on December 31 to take care of telephones, medical, law enforcement, and the utilities. They must work. We must let the public know, every step during the course of this year, what is Y2K compliant, and what isn't. We must let the public know that. I can tell you that I'm absolutely, positively, unequivocally assured by our folks in state government, we will be ready. Our percentages now are in the 15-30 range. But we are going through over 100 million lines of code with our programmers. And as we approach certain thresholds, all of a sudden we'll start taking quantum leaps. When I say we're ready-unlike most other states, where you hear a neighboring state is 80 percent ready, they're only dealing with critical systems-we're dealing with all our systems! Not critical, they're all critical. We're dealing with 100 percent of ours. And we don't count ours ready until we have taken it to the mountain in Colorado where our backup center is, put it on their computers and run the whole thing on their computers without any tape from ours. And it works. And if it doesn't work, we don't count it as ready. But I'm assured we will be ready by July 1 of this year, and we spent a few million bucks doing it. Then from that point on, we will be testing and retesting until the end of the year.

But our citizens have to know where are the telephone and telecommunications companies. We have 60-some phone companies in South Dakota. They all have to be ready. Every hospital has to be ready at least with respect to feeding and caring for the people that are there. Their equipment has to work, or the public should know that. We can't make them make it work-anybody. But the public has to know who's going to function, and who isn't.

The law enforcement and the fire departments, their equipment has to function-911-I can tell you that the task force that this Legislature mandated be put together in legislation last year that's completing its work got a report last Thursday. I believe that says the top eighteen 911s in South Dakota are not Y2K compliant. As a matter of fact, one of the major vendors that provides equipment says, If you bought it from us before, get this, 1997 we're not going to make it compliant. If you bought it afterwards, we will. So they are faced with the prospect of buying new equipment that may have been purchased in 1996. But right now the top 18 are not compliant, but they are working on it.

We've got to make sure that we have municipal water and rural water. Have to have it. No other choice. We've got to make sure that sewer systems-municipal water is meaningless if you can't flush it or let it go down the kitchen sink or the bath drain. The sewer systems have to work. We have to make sure that those places that live on natural gas, the natural gas has to work. And the electrical generation-our power companies, our various investor-owned utilities, our public power systems-those that generate, those that distribute, those that do both, they have to function, because one of them going down can suck the whole system down on the grid. So we are going to put together a group of people, and they will be making reports with regularity to the public with respect to these specific areas-state government, for those local governments that choose to be involved, fine. I'll not attempt to force them to do anything. But all the rest of them I'm going to use the gubernatorial powers that I have that deal with emergencies and crises to get the information and make it available to the public. I do know the Public Utilities Commission has met with respect to-electrical utilities had a meeting and I believe telephone utilities, so far. So they're also working on this endeavor. But, folks, this is terribly critical, and so, rather then being an alarmist, I'm just going to tell you that we will try and get the information to the public as fast as we can intelligently and effectively assemble it. And we will be prepared, at least to deal with, hopefully, those limited emergency situations that we have to deal with December 31. There could be some disruptions in April, and there could be some disruptions on September 9. This is obviously out of my bailiwick, but they tell me that programmers used to end their programs with 9999, four nines. Well, that happens to be also 9-9 of 99, and the computer doesn't know the difference. So, for some, it may trigger when it gets to that. When it sees that date it may trigger and say that's the end of the program, shut it off, and shut it down. For some it may erase it. The problem is nobody knows where all those 9999s are. That's the problem. If they knew where they were, because they were long ago put in place by people who've long since passed away, moved away, gone into other occupations, or won't tell you, whatever the case is.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 1999

While it is probable that a Governor of a state would have access to some information not available to the public at large, I also don't see why Gov. Janklow necessarily had to be basing his statements on private knowledge. Since the recent NERC report said only an average of 44% of mission-critical systems were finished, and we also know from individual NERC utility data that several utilities had not even started their remediation phase yet, and others had accomplished much less than the 44%, the question becomes, "If the rollover was now, how COULD the grid stay up?" The optimism the NERC report posited was based on what they believed was decent *progress* toward the goal of being ready by 2000. They certainly didn't say the electric utility infrastructure was ready now, and they advised acceleration of work in some areas.

To address the initial question about feedback on the article by Mr. Ratcliffe, I think he did an admirable job of presenting many of the pros and cons in the NERC report. I did think he tended to downplay the difficulty of the remediation/testing portion of a Year 2000 project a little too much.

"And we are talking about a problem that is relatively small, once those problems are identified." (Wouldn't those "identified" problems also have to be FIXED and tested before you're sure they are relatively small?) Mr. Ratcliffe also later described the actual fixing process in what I considered might be a simplistic manner. He wrote:

"Once identified, it is comparatively easy to change the embedded code or to swap out the bad systems for Y2K compliant ones."

This gave me the picture that those involved in the remediation process have a pile of compliant parts for various systems just waiting to be popped into place, like putting a new fuse in a fuse box. When Mr. Ratcliffe was giving a work timing example he again wrote, "..let's assume it takes two hours to repair each problem identified.."

I'm not prepared to assume any such thing, as my reading has indicated the remediation process is not that simple or straightforward, but even if that were the case, what difference does it make if it takes two hours to accomplish a fix if the new software patch or the new compliant system from the utility's vendor takes eight months to arrive? Or if the utility does not have the technical manpower available to do the fixes when the compliant ones arrive? Or the repairs require not only the availability of compliant parts, but availability in time for a scheduled plant outage to install them? Not only do you have to find the problem areas, but find them in time to order/acquire upgrades or replacements which will be available before the end of 2000. Then, of course, there is testing the "fix".

Here are some representative statements made to NERC by utilities about their remediation problems:

"lack of timely and accurate vendor support"

"reluctance of vendors to provide full disclosure"

"dependency on third party vendor products or service availability"

"awaiting solutions from system manufacturers. If they do not come through with corrective actions and upgrades, there may not be sufficient time or availability of new equipment to meet the year end."

"unavailability of certain internal and external resources...including trained hardware and software technicians"

Finally, Mr. Ratcliffe, when discussing NERC's concerns about telecommunications, wrote, "..the telecommunications language in the report is nothing more than a foundation for future litigation." Since I agree with his opinion early in the article that NERC probably did not lie in their report (I believe they presented the data they had in the most optimistic way possible, but did not lie), I also believe that NERC's concerns about potential telecom failures are legitimate, and I'm not sure why Mr. Ratcliffe believes they are "nothing more" than litigation-minded.

-- Anonymous, January 19, 1999

Gary North's assessment of the NERC report. His comment in brackets.

http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/3600

[I read the January 11 report from the North American Electric Reliability Council. The most optimistic figure I found was this: 44% of systems tested seemed to have no problems. That means that 56% did. These must be fixed.]

Does anyone read that if 44% that have been tested with no problem also mean that 56% did have a problem?

I assume that maybe the other 56% have just not been tested yet.

Joe Stout

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999

Oh, wow, Joe. It's such a huge problem trying to figure out what report statements really say or mean. The same problem exists in trying to assess what anybody writes. I've undoubtedly made mistakes in interpreting what an author means, because I didn't "get into their mind" well enough, or understand their perspective, and I think the same applies for us all. Communication in all areas is more complicated than any Y2K project that ever existed! We're always at the mercy of "did what that person mean to say equal what I thought he said?" I'm relating this upfront because I want readers to understand that interpreting anybody's statements is far from an exact art. The road to Year 2000 isn't the only one full of potholes; communicating ideas is a road that's never been paved to start with!

So here we go on another foray into trying to figure out NERC's report. When I first read the NERC report Executive Summary, it seemed to me that when they said, "Only a small percentage of components tested indicate problems with Y2K date manipulations", they were speaking of the Assessment process. But the context was set by the first sentence of the paragraph which was the famous (infamous?) "44% of mission critical components tested", etc.

Later in the report we discover the 44% figure came from an average of 188 utilities' estimations of the amount of Remediation/Testing they had accomplished. So Mr. North may be correct when he says that there must be another 56% of systems (overall average) which still need to be fixed. IF the NERC report WAS referring to the testing AFTER systems had been fixed (the Rmd/Tst data entry row) and were saying that a small percentage of components indicated problems AFTER the remediation and during validation testing, then all we know is that the fixes worked, for the most part.

If NERC is instead referring to the testing of systems during the assessment - to discover if there are date problems - then they're saying that the small percentage of components having date problems is in the context of the overall project.

Then we come down to "small percentage". This is another ambiguous phrase when we stop to think about it. What is NERC's definition of a "small percentage"? 2%? 10%? Or under 30%? We don't know. Also, let's say a company has discovered they have 3,500 systems and only 15% of them need fixing. That's a "small percentage" but it's still 525 systems needing repair or replacement. NERC also said the 44% was for mission critical systems only. Mission critical systems might be considered a "small percentage" of the total project to begin with! So what the heck is NERC talking about? Does anybody know for sure? Were they deliberately obtuse or just sloppy with their definitions and writing skills?

In short, I would also assume the other 56% have just not been tested yet - because they haven't been fixed yet, according to the individual utility estimates. You and Mr. North can both be right. The big problem is that the NERC statements were not defined in way that you can pin down exactly what they meant about anything - and that, in my opinion, is the biggest criticism of the entire report.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999

Why can't we just ask N.E.R.C. what they meant and save us all a lot of concern? :)

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999

Bonnie:

Maybe this will add some clarification. I pulled this from the "NERC Y2k Readiness Assessment Report: Instructions for Completing and Submitting the Report" found at:

http://www.nerc.com/y2k/assessment.html

"Instructions for Completing the Y2k Readiness Assessment Report"

Item 7

"A standard method for determining per cent complete follows. It is preferred that your reponses be geared to % work done compared to total amount of work to be done. This would account for various activities having different amounts of effort. For example: If your inventory shows 100 devices with possible Y2k problems, and your assessment shows that only 2 have Y2k problems and one device has been replaced with a Y2k ready device and the other still needs remediation, the per cent complete to report would be Inventory 100%, Assessment 100%, Remediation and Testing 50%."

There is also a list of regional NERC coordinators with names, phone numbers and email addresses, along with Gene Gorzelnik of NERC at efg@nerc.com, if you wish to seek further clarification. Hope this helps.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999

Charlie, if " one device has been replaced with a Y2k ready device and the other still needs remediation, the per cent complete to report would be Inventory 100%, Assessment 100%, Remediation and Testing 50%.", a utility following that directive would place any remediated BUT NOT TESTED systems in the Rmd/Tst section of the report. Replacing a device is remediation and doesn't necessarily mean that final testing has been done because NERC didn't address the difference. Yet NERC refers to those estimates in the Rmd./Tst row of data as "tested".

Even the directions leave something to be desired because there is no differentiation between remediated systems and remediated and tested systems (as in the final integration testing phase of a Y2K project). Since the directions page stated that questions should be sent to Terry Devaney, I have sent him an e-mail asking for clarification of these directions. Thanks for the suggestion to do so, and hopefully the reply might shed some light on the situation. I'm wondering, though, how many utility project team leaders asked for specific clarification before they gave their estimates to the Project Manager? Like everything else, I would suspect that interpretation on the individual level about how to gauge the estimates given to NERC varied somewhat from utility to utility.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999