http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/17986.html

White House Fears Y2K Panic by Declan McCullagh

12:10 p.m. 18.Feb.99.PST White House officials fear federal agencies that advise employees to begin personal Y2K preparations could unduly alarm the public.

-- Declan McCullagh (declan@y2kculture.com), February 18, 1999

Answers

The Master Spinners are at work. The WH is simply telling employees to prepare. The question is why are they telling them to prepare NOW?

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 18, 1999.

Drat - first time I read it, I thought this was "county by county". It wasn't.

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Ya know, ain't it funny they (the fed's) can't figure out how to be "frank" with their employees - without the word getting out to the "civilians" (us taxpayers out here).

Now, just why the HELL can't they be "frank" with us?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 18, 1999.

Declan: Well you can be sure that its not good news they are going to tell the employees, so I guess the question is how bad will be the bad news.

-- Jim P.E. (outstrip@hotmail.com), February 18, 1999.

Declan, with reference to the meeting, do you have any confirmation from an independent source other than the one member who wished to remain anonymous?

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), February 18, 1999.

Yep.

-- Declan McCullagh (declan@y2kculture.com), February 18, 1999.

Boy I sure like those long answers of yours .... but I've noticed you don't need long answers to tell the truth, do you?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 18, 1999.

zero government agencies compliant, except for social security (unverified) and they wonder how bad it's going to be? The city where these people are is light-years behind. Talk about the clueless leading the clueless..........

-- CJP (paulchri@msn.com), February 18, 1999.

With a March 31st deadline for all federal agencies to have completed system remediation, there will be alot more for the feds to communicate to the public than personal preparation. When most agencies miss this deadline, I would expect that Declan and the other reporters that regularly cover Y2K will be expecting specific and detailed information from Kosninen on what government services WILL be disrupted due to system failures.

-- codebuster (codebuster@large.com), February 18, 1999.

considering that the government has lost all credibility with a significant segment of the population which *is* preparing, one wonders just what they think their little PR moves are going to accomplish.

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), February 19, 1999.

It was said a long time ago that it is impossible to have Y2K ready companies or governments without y2k ready EMPLOYEES. It is impossible to distinguish EMPLOYEES FROM "PUBLIC" So it boils down to the fact that nobody is y2k ready if the public is not prepared. PERIOD.

-- Ann Fisher (zyax55b@prodigy.com), February 19, 1999.