Subject: [civicprep] Navy Assessments Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 15:13:42 -0400 From: "Steve Davis" steve@davislogic.com To: "civicprep" civicprep@4hlists.org

>From the Civic Preparedness discussion list. To post messages to this list, address them to civicprep@4hlists.org. ------------------------------

I have gotten to what I think is the bottom of this issue. This information comes directly from John Koskinen.

In summary: The Navy report referenced by Mr. Lord was on a web site publicly available until a few weeks ago (not just to people passing along "secret government documents"). The report reflected an attempt by the armed services to begin to collect assessment information about infrastructures in the areas in which we have bases. Like everyone else, the services were having a lot of trouble earlier this year getting people to tell them anything.

The ratings were based on anecdotal information that was updated over time and do not reflect "the official government assessment of any kind. Most significantly, which Jim does not note and may not have known (although he made no inquiries that John knows of ) the instructions were to put a "3" (risk of failure) as the default if information was not available. Earlier this year when base commanders and others were trying to determine the status of local infrastructures here and around the world there wasn't much information available, which is why there were so many "3"s.

The lack of local information was one of the reasons the White House launched the "Community Conversations" initiative in May and why DoD has a related initiative they have asked all their base commanders to lead in their local communities, either by supporting the communities conversation or helping to organize one in the absence of any other facilitators.

Third, the people the leadership at DoD and the services care most about are their troops and the advice sent to them by the Secretary of the Navy -- which is anything but alarmist -- reflects the low level of risks from Y2K as seen by the department leadership. (But they did recommend personal preparedness and continue to do so.)

John and I both agree that, as we move through the fall, we will have more than enough interesting and important matters to pursue. In other words, we won't need to be making mountains out of molehills to keep things interesting.

The moral of this story is to always hold back on assuming these types of reports are 100% accurate until someone takes the time to look for the truth in these stories.

Best wishes, Steve

(Please feel free to send this to anyone who may have gotten the earlier messages) Jonathan Latimer http://www.q-a.net/origi.html

-A computer glitch will not bring about the end of civilization. It takes hordes of panicking people to do that.- -Jonathan Latimer-

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