Rick's NERC data analysis available

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Electric Utilities and Y2K : One Thread

I've finally placed my analysis of the latest NERC data online at www.euy2k.com/guest5.htm. You should note that I chose not to directly critique the January 11 NERC report. There's been a lot of analysis of the report itself, such as a great one done by Bonnie Camp (on the CBN website).

At the end of December, after reviewing a lot of data from the NERC site, I decided to take another approach. I actually put the analysis together in early January, prior to the NERC report, based on source data available at the NERC website (www.nerc.com/y2k). My analysis was released to a few key media contacts and others who specifically asked for it prior to issuance of the NERC report.

What I would recommend you do: there's three things you need to read, in this order - my analysis, the NERC source documents referenced in the analysis, and then finally, the NERC report itself. After reading the first two, you should at least be able to filter through the spin of the official NERC report.

I'd be very interested in your feedback via this forum.

-- Anonymous, January 24, 1999

Answers

Thanks Rick. 'Been waiting all weekend to see something from you. I'm a y2k newbie, a former journalist, a lurker and number among those who are very concerned and posting for the first time in any forum. Rock and Roll.

MB

-- Anonymous, January 25, 1999


P.S., Rick. You don't know me (neither does anybody else, Thank God) because I have had enough "face time to last me a lifetime." That's why you don't know me.

I have a feeling, however, that Y2k is an issue that may force me out of hiding. Bookmark my name. Why? I've literally lost sleep over this. A whole bunch of sleep. And this is coming from someone who has spent a whole bunch of time interviewing key policy makers in our federal and local goverments, along with Dr. W. Edwards Deming who was the key GI (as in he really got it) with regard to systemic thinking. I am very skilled at separating spin from evidence, and the evidence with regard to this whole thing seems to relate to systems. Thank you Dr. Deming, and to heck with you at the same time. I have seen the enemy and he may very well be us. 'Wish I could stay in my cave. I am preparing to do something to help people become prepared in my state, since my local newspapers have done very little to inform people about this issue. I am angry about that. It's almost as dumb as the Y2K problem.

Today, when I was in a "Paul Milne mood," I ruminated over one of Deming's last quotes: "Survival is not a requirement." I was one of the last journalists to interview him before he died in December of 1993.

For those of you who don't know who Deming was, all you need to know is that he taught the Japanese how to build quality products after World War II. (Back in the days when "Made in Japan" was a joke.)

Shortly thereafter, he offered the same systemic quality approach to America's auto companies. They weren't interested. They were selling lots of product.

They became interested after the NBC White Paper "If Japan Can, Why Can't We?" in the early 1980's. America's car companies had already tanked. High mileage, very efficient Japanese vehicles were dominating the industry. Gasoline was incredibly expensive (by our standards. Hold the phone. Everything old may be new again). Deming's phone was ringing off the wall.

If he were alive today, I wonder what he'd say about Y2K. I can only speculate, but when I asked him what he'd like to be remembered for, he replied in two words: "Profound knowledge."

When I asked him to elaborate, he said, "The idea that you cannot improve the system by enlarging the system. Knowledge must come from outside the system."

Wonder if he would have been labeled a "Yourdonite" had he been able to participate in forums like these.

Regardless, it's all about systems. Color me terrified.

God bless all of you. I hate you for it, but thanks anyway. 'Gotta order my "Little House on the Prairie" books before the Internet dies, because the grid dies or the phones die, or the banks die, etc., etc., etc. Geez. What a hairball.

Like A.T.& T. says, we're all connected. Yikes.

MB

-- Anonymous, January 25, 1999


This is an excellent and cogent analysis. I was unaware that only 75% of the industry had participated (191/254). It begs the question as to why NERC would so blatently mislead with the "universal participation" claim. That and the "44%" remediation/testing claim go beyond 'spin' to outright deception.

I found the contingency table on page 5 to be particularly illuminating. If one looks at the left 2 columns as 'unprepared/behind' and the right 2 columns as 'making progress/ ahead', the summary news is very bad indeed.

Do you have any hard data on how well the utilities are doing in assuring telecommunications? In general, this area seems to be of little mention and yet its recognized to be of considerable importance.



-- Anonymous, January 25, 1999

To MB:

Interesting to see your take on Deming. I had my Deming in the car just last month, saying to myself "There's something in this book that speaks to the y2k problem." My stepfather used Deming a lot, especially when he was consulting to the Malaysian contries 20-30 years ago with the first LANDSAT programs. He pleaded to Congress for a Challenger back-up years before the Accident, on the grounds that quality was compromised and the commercial and political pressure on the single shuttle system with zero redundancy could not be absorbed safely.

I put my Deming away, and pulled out my de Bono. As you say, this one has to be thought "out of the box".

A few of us are perhaps stepping (or have already stepped) out of the box. It's hard to know if one's out of the box or not, and I imagine Deming might have a strategy for getting out that manages by tactically "shrinking the box".

The box itself - the system - has already been shrunk by the short-term, short-vision approaches that exclude the regenerative bio-system and human-system fields from the equation of "what is necessary for health and survival." Y2k shrinks the box. Actually, it fragments it. Lots of spaces will be available in the chain we now rely upon, and reconfiguration is possible.

In my opinion, preparation to re-configure is the key. The world's industrialized and dominant economy has seriously resisted reconfiguration in an organic manner that serves interests other than tightly specified monetarist goals held by a relative few. Since a full and qualitative system such as what Deming might have us create has been compromised by this exclusive and systemically inexpert tampering that ignored certain inevitable system needs "inside the box", rogue systems are budding globally.

When the inevitable discontinuities occur, due to Y2k and other converging vectors of social change, these new systems will arc across the gaps of interruption and create connectivities that haven't been able to flourish previously.

My contention is that, since quality is still the ultimate efficiency, those discontinuities that can be healed/bridged most quickly by observing the natural arcs of connection and then solidifying those with partnerships, trade and conduct agreements, and the exchange of systemically beneficial arrangements that most equitably serve the largest span of the system will constitute the reconfigurations most likely to endure.

The fact that Y2k has a long-term event horizon, coupled with the fact that lapses of quality (useable record-keeping, adequate communication, decentralized intelligence, etc.) are likely to have higher incidents of failure over-all with standardized workarounds less effective than in-the-field responses to dynamic conditions, may have unexpected rewards.

Check out the Co-Intelligence Institute's y2k portion of their website. A broader format for a few of us who are sharing the world outside of the box is growing at the Millennium Salons community forum and site.

I sense that a number of us, unorganized, spontaneously speaking and doing, are focusing on building structures of human flow first, based on easy input and access, minimal human monitoring, maximized on-site intelligence, with self-imposed controls enlivened by compassionate rationale.

There are a number of interesting perspectives out there, and there is such a place as "out of the box".

Sincerely,

Cynthia Beal

BTW - with respect to emergency challenges in your community that frustrate you, here's a suggested shortcut that tends to cut through confusion and misplaced responsibility:

Work with your county emergency management services, through your sherrif.

Focus on all official neighborhoods and legally defined municipalities and organizations within the county. Metro areas are still managed with county services in an emergency.

Identify persons from the smallest official community unit who will help with emergency services.

Institute Training-for-Trainers programs immediately in CERT (Citizens Emergency Response Training) and NERT (Neighborhood Emergency Response Training), through FEMA via your County government.

Get as many quality people through the training-for-trainers ASAP - be sensitive to gender, cultural and ethnic diversities in order to maximize communication and overall longterm mandate.

Primary goal: have trainers then train and *certify* 2-3 people from every official neighborhood, and as many as possible from unofficial community and interest groupings or businesses ASAP.

This process can move a number of people rapidly through a federal format that already exists and whose purpose - helping in an emergency - is widely agreed upon as a necessity. It supplies the larger system with "certified personnel" who have been exposed to the basics of self-help and emergency response and are less likely to cause harm with their helping than untrained people.

The technology we are surrounded by today demands that we be trained in proper handling of potentially dangerous materials or situations. The process of self-identification and self-training in the community will organically build the connections between people that are sorely needed at this time. The quality Deming would want is found in the tight and unprejudicial focus on an outcome that meets the needs of both individuals and groups. The practice of connection in a neutral environment with a clearly useful goal will serve all of us well.



-- Anonymous, January 28, 1999


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