From Maine Press Herald dated today <:)=

Officials paid a consulting firm $600,000 to study the state government's efforts to avoid the Y2K computer problem, then ordered the consultants not to prepare a written report on its findings so the results would not become public.

The study, by the firm of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, contained criticisms of how the state government was handling its effort to eradicate the Year 2000 problem. However, Maine's Chief Information Officer, Robert Mayer, said a fear of exposing state agencies to security risks, rather than to public criticism, prompted officials to order a closed-door, verbal-only report of the consultants' findings.

The Year 2000 problem relates to the fear that some computer hardware and software that uses two-digit dates, like 99 for 1999, could become confused and fail at the New Year. Any such failures could disrupt vital state services. That is why Maine officials asked Pricewaterhouse to study how well it was completing its Year 2000 remediation effort.

Exactly how critical Pricewaterhouse may have been of this effort is difficult to discern: Legislators with oversight responsibilities for Y2K and for the efficient operation of state departments were not briefed by Pricewaterhouse. Representatives of the consulting company declined to be interviewed about their findings. There is no written report of their conclusions.

"We decided, when we approached the end of the (consulting) engagement, that writing down some of the things  specifics of contingency plans and risk assessments  and letting them become public documents might create vulnerabilities," Mayer said.

He and others worried about whether police staffing plans, or memos about the stockpiling of valuable items by specific state agencies, might be mentioned in a written report, Mayer said. That information could then have been obtained by criminals.

As a result, the only people who can provide information about the consultants' conclusions are those who were audited.

"I'd call it mixed," Gov. Angus King said of the report into his administration's work. "If you hire somebody to tell you what is wrong, they'll tell you what is wrong."

King came away from Pricewaterhouse briefings reassured, rather than more concerned, he said. He is now convinced that Maine government is as ready as it can be for the New Year.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers centered its study on the internal processes by which state government is trying to eradicate the Year 2000 problem.

Topics in the Pricewaterhouse study included whether the state properly organized its work teams, identified potential Year 2000 problems and documented its work. No actual testing of systems was performed.

Sen. Phil Harriman, R-Yarmouth, said he had never heard about the extensive study into Maine's $18 million, four-year effort to eradicate the so-called millennium bug. Harriman is the ranking minority member of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee and of its Joint Select Committee on the Year 2000 Computer Problem.

"It's a little disturbing that it was not put in writing," he said. "I can see where sensitive portions might be (edited out). But the rest of the information should be known and made available to the public.

"The administration certainly should have called the Y2K committee together and presented this information to us so that we didn't have to learn about something like this from the press," Harriman said.

King said that nobody was trying to hide anything from legislators. Officials just wanted to keep security-sensitive information from the public.

"There's nothing sinister here," King said. "There was nothing in their presentation that was alarming or terribly negative."

It makes no sense to hide Year 2000 concerns, King said. The New Year will reveal who is prepared and who is not.

"I have no motivation whatsoever to repress anything or minimize anything," King said.

The state could try to arrange a meeting between Pricewaterhouse and legislators if lawmakers want that information directly, King said. Mayer also will put some summations of the consultants' findings about specific departments on the state's Web site:

www.state.me.us

The Pricewaterhouse study concluded that Maine state agencies had a good awareness of the Year 2000 computer problem and its potential implications, according to Mayer. The consulting firm praised certain agencies for their work, such as the Corrections Department's effort to inventory all its potential problems.

Pricewaterhouse faulted almost every department for not giving top executives more responsibility for making sure the problem was fixed, Mayer said.

Also according to Mayer, Pricewaterhouse criticized Maine for not creating a centralized Y2K task force, a lapse that led to redundant administrative effort and extra taxpayer expense; for having poor documentation of the work performed in some departments; and for not looking at each step of the departments' business operations in detail.

Sen. Marge Kilkelly, D-Wiscasset, who is co-chair of the Y2K committee, said her committee should have been informed directly of the consultants' findings and the conclusions should have been set in writing.

"The concern that I have from a legislative perspective, almost a citizen perspective, is how does anybody then evaluate whether that ($18 million in remediation and $600,000 in consulting) money was well spent?" she said. The lack of a written report also will make it hard for government officials to learn from the Pricewaterhouse findings as they complete future projects, she said.

"When you have staff that turn over, commissioners that turn over, how is that information being carried forward?" Kilkelly said.

Many organizations across society are reluctant to talk specifically about Y2K readiness for fear of panicking the public, she said. But that reticence can itself make people nervous, she said.

Kilkelly said she worries that secrecy will feed speculation that industry and government are hiding Y2K information from the public, even as officials make public pronouncements that things will be fine.

"Having a report that's not in writing so that it won't become public just feeds that (public) frenzy that something is being kept from me," Kilkelly said. "Frankly, it sounds like it is."

Government secrecy makes it hard for those trying to calm society about Y2K, Harriman agreed. He believes that Maine is ready for the date change, but secrets make it hard to promote that view.

"Any time that you create an element of secrecy or doubt among the public, you are undercutting the whole initiative of trying to reassure people that there won't be major problems," Harriman said. "If everything is as it should be, why is it secret?"

Mayer said he would be more worried about such concerns if so much information already had not been made public about Year 2000 compliance efforts. Mayer speaks widely at public forums about the state's effort. So do many people involved in remediation for banks, utilities, hospitals and other key institutions.

"My monthly status sheet is on our Web site  750 computer systems, exactly where they are in the process, the date at which they are certified as being compliant, any issues that came up, is all there," Mayer said.

Several people familiar with the state's Y2K effort agreed with Mayer that Maine government appears ready. A lot of self-reporting has been done by Mayer's office and the individual state agencies.

"I think people (at the state) are being candid about the work they are doing," said Stephen Brown, a Freeport business owner and member of the Governor's Year 2000 Preparedness Task Force. Security issues are real and might properly have led to the Pricewaterhouse report being kept private, he said.

He particularly worries that vulnerabilities in computer systems might be revealed to cyberterrorists and other hackers interested in damaging Maine's computers.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers arrived at its conclusions through a month-long, exhaustive series of interviews and surveys with workers in each state agency. The three consulting teams assigned to Maine also reviewed documents and draft plans.

The study was completed in July and presented to King and his department heads in August. Pricewaterhouse Coopers officials met with the Cabinet and then in two-hour sessions with individual commissioners.

"They really focused on what they thought we should do during the remaining time," Mayer said.

The departments got all the information they needed to act on the consultants' findings, through the private, verbal reports, Mayer said.

That method of spreading the study's conclusions was selected because certain sensitive pieces of information, which could have been part of a written report, were not covered under exemptions to Maine's Right to Know law, Mayer said.

"We went and talked to our attorney about that, and he basically said that if there is a report given to you in response to this engagement, then the whole thing is a public document," Mayer said. "There's nothing that you could cull out, under our existing statutes, that could be withheld."

Gordon Scott, an Augusta lawyer who represents the Maine Press Association, said state law probably would have forced release of the whole Pricewaterhouse document. However, he said he does not see why the state could not have asked its consultants to edit out sensitive information from the written report while putting the remainder  the overwhelming majority of its findings  in writing.

"Why didn't they ask their consultants to withhold certain parts of the report?" he asked.

Those efforts are legal, said Jon Piper, a Portland lawyer who represents the Portland Press Herald and several other news organizations, and specializes in media law.

"The Right to Know law does not require an agency to create a document," Piper said. "They've done nothing illegal."

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PUC grants utilities secrecy on Y2K plans

The Maine Public Utilities Commission has passed an unusual blanket order that allows utilities to file their Year 2000 contingency plans  the documents that outline how companies will respond to potential problems  as confidential.

The PUC feared that portions of these contingency plans, if revealed publicly, might create security risks or competitive problems for the companies involved, said Tom Welch, chairman of the commission. Commissioners declined to edit out sensitive portions of the plans and make public the rest, as they generally do with documents in public proceedings.

"We issued a blanket protective order so that if companies wanted to file things on a confidential basis, they could do so," Welch said. "We wanted to be sure we got the information, and there is information in there that should not be in the public domain."

This information includes the mechanisms for disabling utility networks, in case of emergency, and home phone numbers for key workers, Welch said.

Besides, the commission has been active in providing other Y2K-related information, he said. It has held public forums on Y2K, published information about utility preparedness on its Web site and otherwise provided the public with information about the troublesome date change.

Still, PUC officials acknowledged that this public information does not have the level of detail contained in contingency plans.

"I'm sure there's information in those plans that didn't need confidential treatment," Welch said. "Frankly, as a matter of internal convenience, we wanted the filings to come in without a lot of debate between lawyers about what we can hold confidential."

Maine law grants broad authority to the PUC, which is a quasi-judicial body, to keep secret information in its proceedings. This includes data that could hurt the competitive position of utility companies, or any information that could do unnecessary harm, as judged by the commission.

Still, the PUC does not generally exercise that authority with sweeping orders.

The commission often challenges utilities' requests for confidentiality. In April, it denied a request from phone companies to keep secret other, more general, Y2K information.

It has twice before issued this kind of blanket confidentiality order, in cases unrelated to Y2K, according to Phil Lindley, a PUC spokesman.

"I can't remember, from my dealings with this, that they've done this before," said Rep. Thomas Davidson, D-Brunswick, who co-chairs the Legislature's Utilities and Energy Committee. "Obviously, this is a once-in-a-millennium phenomenon. I think all of the normal rules have been thrown out the window."

He said he believes that many institutions and agencies are resorting to unusual secretiveness in a desire to manage the public's perceptions of Y2K. Many people worry that a public panic could lead to a run on bank counters, panic buying and other disruptions.

"One of the things we've tried to do is limit some of the hysteria surrounding this," Davidson said.

Still, secrecy in public proceedings is not the way to go about accomplishing that mission, he said.

"Consumers have a right to know the soup to nuts of all these issues. I think people have a right to know what will happen if their utility crashes," Davidson said.

"It will inherently feed some of the sentiment that they're trying to keep this information private," he said.

On Tuesday, the PUC mailed a letter to all Maine's public utilities asking them to voluntarily provide as much Y2K information to the public as possible, including non-sensitive portions of their contingency plans.

"The public needs information that will enable it to make informed judgments about Y2K and preparations for it if necessary," Welch wrote.

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 29, 1999

Answers

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"There's nothing sinister here," King said. "There was nothing in their presentation that was alarming or terribly negative."

King said that nobody was trying to hide anything from legislators. Officials just wanted to keep security-sensitive information from the public.

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Good News

-- Everybody go back to sleep now.

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 29, 1999.

"I'd call it mixed..."

Or perhaps mixed gov priorities?

"Any time that you create an element of secrecy or doubt among the public, you are undercutting the whole initiative of trying to reassure people that there won't be major problems," Harriman said. "If everything is as it should be, why is it secret?"

This is the kind of statement only Rocket Scientists understand... duh!

...there is information in there that should not be in the public domain."

...includes data that could hurt the competitive position of utility companies...

Uh... EXCUUUUUSE ME! But what about the people? You know... those folks who make it possible for the dot govs et. al. to collect paychecks?

...believes that many institutions and agencies are resorting to unusual secretiveness in a desire to manage the public's perceptions of Y2K.

Does anyone else NOT find this idiocy reassuring?

"The public needs information that will enable it to make informed judgments about Y2K and preparations for it if necessary...

But only if those judgements jive with a three-day storm.

*Big Sigh*

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 29, 1999.

Why can't the government take their own advice?

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From the Senate Y2k Committee Web Site

CONSUMER TIPS: Preparing for Y2K

Be an informed citizen and ask your local officials what they have done to prepare for Y2K.

balzer@lanset.com), September 29, 1999.

Just 28 workdays 'till Thanksgiving.

It won't be long now.

-- K. Stevens (K. Stevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 29, 1999.