Monday May 24 7:04 PM ET

Gov't. Urges Local Y2K Meetings

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government began a campaign Monday to encourage local communities nationwide to organize meetings for citizens to find out how the Year 2000 computer problem might affect them.

The President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion wants America's cities and counties to organize ``Community Conversations,'' town hall-style meetings with local leaders, companies and utilities.

To help organize these meetings, the council is offering free a ``toolkit,'' which can be ordered over a toll-free telephone number or from its Web site, www.y2k.gov.

The kit consists of a poster, informational video and a list of frequently asked questions that outlines who ought to be invited to participate.

The government recommends, for example, inviting officials from local banks and hospitals, and executives from power, water and telephone companies, among others. It suggests forming of panel that can be questioned by citizens in the audience, or appointing a moderator to pose questions and encourage the audience to participate.

JohnKoskinen, chairman of council, said the purpose of these meetings is twofold: to help citizens decide what preparations they need to make to prepare for the Y2K problem and to identify companies and organizations that aren't preparing adequately on their own.

``Domestically, the greatest risk we have for failures is those cities and counties and areas where local organizations are not paying enough attention to this problem - where people are basically adopting a wait-and-see attitude,'' Koskinen said.

Some trade associations have promised to encourage their members to send executives, if invited.

The Y2K problem exists because some computers originally programmed to recognize only the last two digits of a year could interpret 2000 as 1900, causing failures such as billing problems or utility outages.

Nationally, experts predict the effects from the Y2K problem will resemble scattered, regional failures similar to those experienced during a bad storm rather than a nationwide catastrophe.

Koskinen said one of the earliest such meetings will be June 7 at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

-- Jean Wasp (jean@sonic.net), May 26, 1999