what are readers of this BB doing locally re their county, city, township, school district, or special districts in which they live. For those not "heading for the hills" and planning to stay where they are, have you checked to see what the y2k situation is re your fire, police, emergency 911, municipal utilities, traffic lights, etc.?

While private enterprise can stonewall inquires for fear of stock price deflation, governments can be more effectively pressured to give data. Besides beyond the importance of our jobs and businesses, local government is important as it provides a huge array of mission critical services, especially in emergencies. I think this a lot more crucial than spending time speculating on, say, the probability of No. Korea invading So Korea if our GPS goes down, as bad as that may turn out to be.

-- victor porlier (vporlier@aol.com), February 27, 1998

Answers

Reference is made to www.magnet.state.ma.us/y2k/ which includes Report on y2k preparedness of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as reported by State auditor - pdf. Approx 75 page report. Interesting ly, the top of Web site gives countdown to year 2000 in days, hours, minutes - it also provides countdown in # of business days as well as the # of business days to FY2000, which will be July 1, 1999. The overall report spells "doom and gloom" regarding lack of qualified personnel, inadequate revenues, inability to compete with entities out- side the Commonwealth for qualified people etc. Id's the dimensions of the problems within the Commonwealth as "enormous". Kind of re- minds one of the article in Computerworld magazine regarding the qualifications for work as a programmer. If you can operate a "mouse" your hired -- if you can breathe, you hired and even that could be negotiable.

-- j.w.parker (j.w.parker@usa.net), February 28, 1998.

I did some investigating. My city is very responsive, but they are looking for advice, too.

The Federal Government's Year 2000 Web site is at http://www.itpolicy.gsa.gov/mks/yr2000/y2khome.htm.

California's Year 2000 Web site is at http://www.year2000.ca.gov.

-- Markus Fromherz (Markus_Fromherz@yahoo.com), May 20, 1998.

The City of Lincoln (Nebraska) has a Y2K status report at: http://interlinc.ci.lincoln.ne.us/InterLinc/city/finance/dp/sysdev/y2kstat.htm

According to this document the city is finished with its' Y2K preparations, and was 6 months ahead of schedule and 50 percent under budget.

The state of Nebraska has no Y2K status site, but the last report (2 weeks ago) I heard was they are on track for a 12/98 conversion finish, and testing will begin in 1/99.

-- No Name-sorry (anonymous@anonymous.com), July 06, 1998.