I'm not quite sure who or what DCI is, but occasionally they publish some fairly decent pieces on Y2K. Usually, they're at least a few weeks behind the curve, but once in a while, they hit the target.

This piece, however, is pretty horrible. It makes it quite clear that they are anti-consumer, and willing to pull all the dumb cliches out of the bag to make the point. They should be embarrassed to print stuff like this, after having some half-way decent material. The Financial Times should also be embarrassed for being the crux of this argument.

http://year2000.dci.com/Articles/9906301.htm

"Retail companies, here and overseas, are among the best prepared for Y2K. Try telling that to the customers, though.

Stockpiling: the Real Y2K Threat

Stockpiling by a frightened public before the end of the year, according to the Financial Times, is emerging as a big concern.

The fear is particularly unsettling for supermarket food chains, reports the respected British financial and news journal. We are watching buying patterns closely in order to monitor customers actions, Peter

Cox, I.T. systems director for Waitrose, a supermarket chain in the UK, told FT. To figure out what they will stockpile and when they will start.

Whats even more puzzling is that the industrys confidence in its preparedness to handle the Y2K bug is growing daily. Industry-wide initiatives have underpinned this, FT reports, by organizing those larger companies which have been well advanced in their preparations to share their information and experiences with less well-equipped groups and organizations. The Institute of Grocery Distribution, for example, has been running its Initiative 2000 program for over a year. Knowledge relating to Y2K by the organizations members has been pooled and disseminated. The IGD says that this has been of particular help to medium and smaller retailers.

Americans, far and away better prepared than any nation on earth, arent letting that stand in the way of a good panic. The Sacramento Bee reports of Nevada City resident Dennis Edwards, who has invested $17,000 on a survival kit for the new millennium. It includes a propane generator, a water tank, a greenhouse and some rabbits and chickens.

Edwards isnt a survivalist, but a normal, mild-mannered salesman who volunteers at the local health-food cooperative. According to the Bee, hes thinking about buying a gun, too. Im not crazy about the idea, but I have a family, said Edwards, a father of two.

Almost every informed observer and agency dealing with the Y2K problem acknowledge that unjustified public panic could well be worse than any technical glitches arising from the failure of some computer systems to read 00 as 2000 instead of 1900. Nightmare scenarios include runs on banks and supermarkets, and the Federal Reserve has authorized the printing of billions of extra paper notes to handle such craziness.

Waitrose used one of their stores in Chelmsford that was closing down to run a comprehensive year 2000 test on its in-store systems. The result, says Cox, was encouraging: We found the concern surrounding embedded chips, from our point of view, was overdone.

As will millions of other slightly sheepish stockpilers, no doubt."

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), June 30, 1999

Answers

Interesting pshannon.

I marvel at the companies involved in and hiring other firms for Y2K "Perception Management" when if thed just be HONEST rather than communicate in PR-speak or Legal-speak, the public might retain more confidence in their ability to manage the unknown, interrelated, global Y2K problems of unknown magnitude.

They really dont get it, do they?

Or... they arent that confident themselves.

Diane

See...

Confused about Y2k? Maybe this is why. Get ready for more of the same.
(Burson-Marsteller Establishes Global Network of Y2K Communications Command Centers )

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 0011LX

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), June 30, 1999.

Oh, and these are recent quotable classics...

Y2K Contingency Planning Is Crucial Element (USIA--Washington File-- Tokyo, Japan Speech)

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 00114k

The second belief is that transparency is the best way to help insure that the public does not panic. Panic can be just as destructive, if not more, than some people's worst case scenarios of what might happen come January first. This means that public perceptions will have a large impact. For example, if a country is seen as unprepared - because there is no information to the contrary - then there is the danger of capital flight. Locally, lack of information can cause stockpiling and other panic. People, and countries, need to know what steps are being taken to prepare for January 1, 2000. Getting information into the public domain about preparedness levels and contingency plans helps to provide a comfort level and allows everyone to judge how they should best prepare.

[snip]

As Commerce Secretary Richard Daley noted, "All nations, whether developing or developed, highly computerized or not, are firmly interwoven into a global web of economic interdependence that a Y2K mishap could unravel."

[snip]

Mr. Koskinen told reporters, "Although the situation has improved in the past year as more [nations] have become aware of the problem and begun to take action, many countries got a late start on fixing their systems and will likely experience infrastructure failures...." These potential failures will be felt outside the boundaries of the countries they occur in. The inter-connectivity of the world ensures this fact. As my boss Mr. Spalter is fond of pointing out, "No country is a digital island unto itself."

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), June 30, 1999.