What questions should I ask at county Y2K meeting?

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Tomorrow (10/11) my county in WI is hosting their Y2K public meeting. Lotsa representatives from utilities, Red Cross, etc. I want to ask a lot of questions that really bring out their state of preparedness. Have suggestions? Thanks.

-- Shivani Arjuna (SArjuna@aol.com), October 10, 1999

Answers

How about: "May we see a copy of the county's Y2K contingency plan? Has it been distributed to all county employees? Have they been trained in appropriate procedures to carry out if the contingency plan is invoked? Has the plan been tested or audited by a 3rd party?"

Same question can be addressed to banks, utilities, or any other organization.

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), October 10, 1999.


Paul,

Unfortunately, "fully tested" is a sufficiently ambiguous term that any moderately competent bureaucrat will have no trouble answering, "100%! Yessirree! We're ready for that new millennium thang, whatever it is!"

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), October 10, 1999.


Just one question, no hemming and hawing, just a SIMPLE STRAIGHT ANSWER...

What percentage of the totality of county sytems have been remediated, fully tested and are BACK in production RIGHT NOW?

-- Paul Milne (fedinfo@halifax.com), October 10, 1999.


If there is someone there representing local banks, ask them what you should do for Y2K. They'll probably give the same old line: "Don't take any extra cash out, keep detailed bank records." Then ask for details on what to do if they go under for whatever reason, and you have to submit a claim to the FDIC. Ie. who's records do they use? The correct answer is they only use the bank's records.

According to the FDIC website: The "deposit account records" of an insured depository institution are account ledgers, signature cards, certificates of deposit, passbooks, and certain computer records. However, account statements, deposit slips, items deposited, and cancelled checks are not considered deposit account records for purposes of calculating deposit insurance.

-- James Collins (jacollins@thegrid.net), October 10, 1999.


I just went through a city sponsored course on emergency prepardness, what I was really surprised about was how few workers there were for the size of the city. City size 32,000 number of ciy employees are 120 (this included police, fire and other personal). The other thing that surprised me was that they didn't have an "official" emergency shelters. Their response for y2k emergency was that if you are prepared for an earthquake, evacuation, flood, tital waves,volcano, and man made disasters other than y2k, then you should be prepared for y2k. Makes your head spin.

Whatever question you ask, their goal is to make you feel safe and secure. A good question would be: What are you doing on Dec 31?--Just remember they can still lie.(and don't mean like a dog) :-)

-- Ice (icemanltd@webtv.net), October 10, 1999.



Just show them the IEEE document litigation document. That should get everyones attention.

If they are not familiar with IEEE: Just tell them, well this organization sets some of the standards for these same computers in question. IEEE Also sets Ethernet Standard 100base-T 802.3u dont ask me I just read this stuff.

Any logical person that reads the IEEE Report will take this seriously. Note on logical person

-- D.B (dciinc@aol.com), October 10, 1999.


I am preparing to give a presentation at a local Y2K meeting, Saturday, October 16. I am going to "preach" on the Executive Summary of the Senate's 100-Day Report. I suggest that you make a few dozen copies of the Executive Summary, and distribute them freely before, during, and after the meeting. (Eight pages of text, only four pages of two-sided copies; three pages two-sided if you reformat the text with a word processor.) Make sure the presenters get a copy, too: believe me, many of them are as much in the dark as the average citizen.

As to the IEEE Open Letter to Congress, I quoted from it briefly in my last presentation, along with brief quotations from other documents whose messages, somehow, never make their way into the news. I had ten copies of the entire Open Letter. All of them went. The audience was eager for material that doesn't parrot the "party line"... because, I gather, most of them already don't believe the party line.

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), October 10, 1999.


Ask them why they all started so late.

Ask them why they couldn't hold this meeting LAST YEAR.

All the utilities will send PR people. They have a presentation and have been briefed on what to expect in terms of questions.

They will all regale you with tales of how hard they have worked and when they started (1996, amazing how they all started then.)

Ask them if they started having meetings about it in 1996, or if they started actually working on the code.

They will all say that they are 100% Y2K-Ready, or 100% Y2K- Compatible.

You could ask them if they know the difference between Y2K-READY and Y2K COMPLIANT.

You may not be able to ask "alot" of questions, to "really bring out their state of preparedness". Ed's question about asking for their contingency plans is a very good one if you only get one question.

If alot of people have questions, you may only be allowed one question.

pick a good one.

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), October 10, 1999.


Shivani, I think you already know where they really are in compliancy and that you're heck bent on exposing yourself to them and others as a person with a stockpile of canned goods.

Think twice. Skip the meeting.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), October 10, 1999.


Shivani, there was an excellent thread on this forum in late August with a LONG list of great questions to ask. I ran it just in time to take it to my county's Y2K meeting. Have it at home in mountains of printouts, but you can search the archives today. Good luck!

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), October 11, 1999.


I know this is late, but it is the only question that they WILL NOT have an acceptable answer for:

Why is it OK for govt, business, other large orgs to stockpile supplies, money, fuel, etc - but not OK for individuals, families. churches, etc. to do the same?

-- Jim (x@x.x), October 11, 1999.


For those that are interested, my info came from the FDIC web site. The link is: http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/insured/index.html Look in General Questions at questions 7 and 8.

-- James Collins (jacollins@thegrid.net), October 11, 1999.

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