Announcement of Y2K Center in D.C. Now Official,, Breaking news.

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Well, we knew about this for awhile but here the story.. Some other intresting stuff too.

Monday November 8 3:54 PM ET White House Readies Y2K Center By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House lifted the veil Monday on a $40 million operations center designed to track how the world fares as it enters the technologically challenging Year 2000.

The center, in old Secret Service premises two blocks from the White House, will launch 24-hour operations on Dec. 28 continuing through the first few days of the new year or longer if conditions warrant.

Brian Kilgallen, head of the center's public outreach arm, told reporters that Y2K-tracking operations ``probably'' would continue at a reduced pace until March 15 to monitor any Leap Year complications for automated systems.

Jokingly dubbed the Y2K ``bunker'' by congressional staff members, the facility is on upper floors at 1800 G St. N.W. It will coordinate data collected by existing government emergency centers and, for the first time, the private sector.

Arrangements have been made for the sharing of centralized information by the following industries: electric power, banking, finance, telecommunications, oil, gas, airline, pharmaceuticals and retail industries.

The Information Coordination Center (ICC), as the project is formally known, is being set up by the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, headed by John Koskinen, a presidential assistant.

The ICC will receive international status reports from the State Department, Pentagon, U.S. intelligence agencies and private sector information centers, he told Congress last week.

Koskinen has said basic U.S. infrastructure is ready for Jan. 1, when unprepared computers could crash if they misread the last two zeros in the date field and mistake 2000 for 1900.

Icc To Serve As Briefing Facility

In the days surrounding the century date change, the ICC will also serve as a briefing facility for the United Nations-backed, World Bank-funded International Y2K Cooperation Center, which is coordinating the work of national Y2K coordinators worldwide.

In addition, it will work with the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the FBI-led cyber crime detection operation, and computer emergency response teams in the United States and abroad to monitor unauthorized computer intrusions, Koskinen told two House panels on Nov. 4.

Information gathered by the ICC will be the basis for regularly updated national and international status reports provided to federal decision-makers. But the center itself will not be involved in decision-making, Koskinen has said.

Mindful of conspiracy theorists, he dismissed as a myth the notion that the federal government was planning to use the Y2K issue as an excuse to ``take control'' of key institutions in the United States.

Kilgallen said status reports would be provided to the public about once an hour start starting shortly after 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT) Friday, Dec. 31, when New Zealand becomes the first industrial country to ring in the New Year.

Comprehensive, on-camera briefings by Koskinen were tentatively scheduled to take place about once every four hours, Kilgallen said.

The center's operations are headed by Peter Kind, a retired Army lieutenant general.

Full Coverage See a Yahoo! special report on Year 2000 Problem News Stories 7 IRS To Give Relief For Y2K Glitches - Reuters (11/09/99) 7 China may shut down banks and cash machines to avoid Y2K troubles - AFP (11/09/99) 7 Y2K Air-Travel Problem Countries - Computer Currents (11/08/99) 7 US Not Holding Back Y2K Info - Computer Currents (11/08/99) 7 Staying Till the End - Computerworld (11/08/99) More In Full Coverage Opinion & Editorials 7 Y2K will likely bring more prosperity - Jewish World Review (10/15/99) 7 Corporate America Hoards Cash For Y2K. So What? - Ironminds (10/07/99) 7 Nothing to fear but Y2K fear itself - The Economist (09/23/99) 7 You're Y2-OK, I'm Y2-OK - Christian Science Monitor (09/22/99) 7 The day Miami stood still - Miami New Times (09/16/99) Audio 7 The horror film approach to Y2K preparation - NPR (11/02/99) 7 Don't count on 9999 to go by unnoticed - CBC.CA (09/09/99) 7 How Y2K could affect the internet - NPR (08/17/99) More In Full Coverage Video 7 Australia is likely to be almost bug-free - BBC (09/14/99) Message Boards 7 Yahoo!: Y2K Problem 7 Internet Law Bulletin Board 7 on top of IT Related Full Coverage 7 Year 2000 Problem in Canada Yahoo! Categories 7 Millennialism More In Full Coverage



-- Slammer (Billslammer@Yahoo.com), November 09, 1999

Answers

Why bother with all of this if y2k is solved? As the pollies have always told us, this will accomplish nothing other than to create fear. We have no technological problem, just the fear itself.

We should all laugh at this.

-- Larry (cobol.programmer@usa.net), November 09, 1999.


"Mindful of conspiracy theorists, he dismissed as a myth the notion that the federal government was planning to use the Y2K issue as an excuse to ``take control'' of key institutions in the United States."

Hey Hypocrite Koffinsky, remember your darling quote? :

"Koskinen said the government would be moving from contingency planning to a crisis-management phase.

Responding to a question about electrical-power failures, Koskinen said, "In a crisis and emergency situation, the free market may not be the best way to distribute resources.... If there's a point in time where we have to take resources and make a judgement on an emergency basis, we will be prepared to do that."

Some of the concerned weeples do have memory, Herr Propaganda.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 09, 1999.


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