A snippet from the "media plan" on the Benton (Wa.) Public Utilities District Y2k website:

"The Media Group has also developed some common messages that will be emphasized in this campaign. The major themes are, of course, what is being done to achieve Y2K readiness and stressing the cooperation of these entities in this endeavor. Other messages are preparedness in general for interruption of service for any reason including storm outages, the idea of "home" readiness, and the delicate issue of alerting the public to be aware of opportunists that may prey on their fears."

Link: http://www.bentonpud.org/y2k/y2k7.htm

-- DisInfo Man (truth.in@dvertis.ing), February 21, 1999

Answers

Also see the advice the North American Electric Reliability Council is giving members on how to conduct a Y2K drill on April 9...

http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/3898

With Adobe Acrobat, you can see the original document in PDF at:

ftp://www.nerc.com/pub/sys/all_updl/docs/y2k/drill-preparation- strategies.pdf

A few quotes...

[snip]

"The April 9 drill is intended to install public confidence through success and at the same time be a real test of our ability to operate with limited communications capabilities. How can these two goals be balanced to provide the greatest value from the exercise?"

[snip]

"Prior to drill, test system(s) that will be exercised during the drill."

[snip]

"Verify that there are no real security issues during the time of the drill"

[snip]

"Do not make the drill to complex. We want to have a successful and meaningful story for publication."

[snip]

"What will the final report look like. Work backwards from this in the development of the drill procedures."

[snip]

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 21, 1999.

The salient question is: is this April 9 business purely a dummy exercise, no live ammo, for PR purposes only, or is there any aspect of this at all to assist utilities in their remediation process? From Kevin's carefully selected quotes, it would appear that the primary motivation is to stack the deck so that anything that might fail isn't exposed.

"The April 9 drill is intended to install public confidence through success and at the same time be a real test of our ability to operate with limited communications capabilities. How can these two goals be balanced to provide the greatest value from the exercise?"

This is not necessarily a stupid question. There is a very real chance that utilities may be obliged to operate with degraded communications, which they weren't designed to do. It's not that unreasonable to ask how we can get genuine practice handling adversity, without causing undue public concern. But I don't like the implication that when in doubt, only test what you know will work. That's not a test.

"Prior to drill, test system(s) that will be exercised during the drill."

Good idea. Testing is always good. But are they saying that if you test these systems and they fail, don't use them in the exercise? Or are they saying that if pretests fail, dammit, fix them before April 9?

"Do not make the drill too complex. We want to have a successful and meaningful story for publication."

Again, successful AND meaningful. Problem is, what if you can't have both? Certainly complexity is the enemy of clarity. The implication is that utilities should pretest, then reduce the scope of their test to only what they know will work. And that's not very meaningful.

"What will the final report look like. Work backwards from this in the development of the drill procedures."

Ugly. Hard to see how this can be interpreted as anything but a request to write a glowing report first, and then rig the 'test' to fit the report.

At best, I think we'll need to read this report very carefully to see exactly what was tested, and assume that anything not tested doesn't work. Let's hope the actual tested communications capabilities are the important ones.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 21, 1999.

I work for the parent company of a utility in the Southeastern US. In one of our co newsletters a few weeks ago, it mentioned something about the testing on 4/9 AND it mentioned other testing. The following is a quote from our newsletter. I have typed it in since there is no link b/c it is an internal publication.

"Additionally, the industry is preparing to conduct two coordinated drills, a communications-focused exercise on April 9 and a "dres rehersal" on the night of Sept. 8-9, to prepare for operations under Y2K conditions."

When I first read it, I immediately recognized the significance of these two dates. April 9 being the 99th day of 1999 and the Sept 8-9 being the rollover to 9/9/99. I guess NERC figures that these are potential problem dates, and conveniently wants to have "testing" in progress so there will be staff on hand to handle any problems associated with these dates.

-- Mike (Mike@southeastern.US), February 21, 1999.

Mike,

That's interesting and makes sense.

Kevin, looks like they've learned public impressions skew, from the poll creators.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), February 21, 1999.