Bennett disbands panel on Y2K bug

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 29, 2000

Answers

Thanks, Dee.

Personnaly, I applaud Bennett and Dodd for their hearings on Y2K, I believe they were as close to an objective hearing that was possible. And I agree that the Senate hearings went along way to publicize the critical need for remediation which helped reduce the systemic nature of the impacts.

Funny that the news article bullet points foreign Y2K impacts but buries US impacts in a brief paragraph. And no mention of Oil - I guess this is too hot an issue and might delay closing down the Senate Y2K committee.

I'll look for the URL to a final report on the Senate Y2K pages and post if I find it.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), February 29, 2000.

While Bennett shut down his own committee, he urged President Clinton not to shut down the White House Y2K command center. He said the federal government should keep it running as a focal point to combat cyber terrorism and other high-tech threats. "The capabilities of this facility would be well-suited to dealing with the Information Age threats of hackers, cyber terrorism, cyber crime and information warfare," Bennett said.

Not to mention being able to "monitor" the free exchange of ideas and thoughts on the web, in conjunction with Echelon, and send the "Sturmtruppen" to the doors of offending citizens at 2 a.m. on "no-knock" raids.

"Vill you come vis us pleeze? Ve haf some qveschunz for you. Your papers are NOT in order...."

Hmmmmm.....

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), February 29, 2000.

Yep. US Senate site confirms Senate's Y2K committee disbanded today and issued final report in .pdf format:

US Senate Y2K Final Report - Crisis Averted

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), February 29, 2000.

[ Fair Use: For Educational / Research Purposes Only ]

Tuesday, February 29, 2000

Bennett disbands panel on Y2K bug

Final report says glitches abroad underreported

By Lee Davidson, Deseret News Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON  It's said that nothing is so permanent as a temporary government committee. But Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, proved that wrong Tuesday.

Bob Bennett formally disbanded the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, which he chaired during its entire existence. He said the Y2K bug is dead, and the committee is no longer needed.

But as a last hurrah, it released a final report that said the Y2K bug actually created more mischief than many people realized  in part because many who had problems abroad didn't report it.

"We had more problems overseas than the press reported. There were many people who were simply embarrassed about their Y2K problems and didn't talk about it," Bennett told the Senate.

"Indeed, we have some examples before the committee of problems that did exist that were later denied simply because of the embarrassment that people felt," he said.

Examples of some problems abroad included in the report are:

* Prison door systems failed in British Columbia.

* Nuclear power plant control systems had problems in such places as the Ukraine, Russia and Spain.

* Medical machines  including X-ray, diagnostic and dialysis machines
 failed in such places as Bolivia, Botswana, Egypt, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mexico and Sri Lanka.

* ATM machines would not dispense cash in such places as China, Namibia, Sweden and Norway.

* Computers had glitches at the Islamabad Stock Exchange in Pakistan, and a Hong Kong futures exchange suffered an outage.

* Fifteen percent of small businesses in France reported Y2K-related malfunctions, and 5 percent of private firms in Great Britain had problems.

* Cash registers failed in Germany, Greece and Norway.

* An Italian court system inadvertently erased all of its 1999 data.

* Graduates at Korea University received graduation certificates dated 1900.

The committee reported, "It is interesting to note that official government reports from around the world report far fewer incidents than reported by news services.

"For example, 32 countries including Australia, Brazil, Great Britain, Canada, Germany and Norway reported no incidents on the official International Y2K Cooperation Center's Web site despite the fact that many incidents were reported in these countries by reliable news services," the report said.

Bennett noted that no major problems were experienced in the United States, although numerous minor problems occurred and persist, ranging from delays of Medicare payments in some states to double-billing by some credit card companies to 911 problems in some cities to degradation of a spy satellite system.

Bennett said problems could have been catastrophic without work by his committee to draw attention to the problem and hard work by businesses and government to fix programming problems.

The report said the United States spent $100 billion to fight the Y2K bug ($8.5 billion of it within the federal government).

Bennett said, "It was very much worth it" to avoid the problems.

While Bennett shut down his own committee, he urged President Clinton not to shut down the White House Y2K command center.

He said the federal government should keep it running as a focal point to combat cyber terrorism and other high-tech threats.

"The capabilities of this facility would be well-suited to dealing with the Information Age threats of hackers, cyber terrorism, cyber crime and information warfare," Bennett said.

He added, "The recent attacks against high-profile e-commerce Web sites demonstrate the need for a coordinated defense of America's robust, high-tech economy."

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), February 29, 2000.

Turn out the lights, the party's over...

-- Dandy Don (It was fun while it l@st.ed), February 29, 2000.

Bill,

Thank you for your additional input on this topic. Much appreciated.

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 29, 2000.

Interested parties should read the Senate Final Report at above Link.

It identifies more international Y2K impacts than Homer Beanfang, Carl Jenkins and the rest of us combined have seen anywhere else.

The whole cost has not yet been counted. I wonder if and when the lawsuits wil be coming? Next "official" input might be reports of 1st Qtr impacts in 10Qs to issue in April.

Re Oil impacts only Nigeria and Iraq mentioned as having a trivial problem, can this be true?

Re Aviation no serious impacts mentioned in Senate Report.

Either this report is incomplete; or someone wants the committee to shut down no matter what or all the impacts being reported here and elsewhere (and felt at gas pump) are not Y2K related.

If Oil and Aviation are not having serious Y2K impacts than I would say we are seeing incredibly incompetent management and massive high level firings are in order.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), February 29, 2000.