October 13th the Washington D.C. Year 2000 Group met at Fannie Mae headquarters to hear about international readiness for the century date change. Presenters were: Sr. Carlos Guedes, Chief Information Officer of InfoDevBank (the Latin American arm of the World Bank), Mr. Bruce McConnell, Chairman of the International Y2k group of the United Nations, and a representative from the State Department. I was present for the first two speakers , and left when the State Dept. person said they were looking forward to the challenge of CDC.

Extreme Caution

Sr. Guedes had presented previously at the Washington Post in December of 1998 (you can get a tape from Cspan of the dialogue, and I am the one who asks the last question of the meeting.)and at that time was optimistic about the ability of Latin America to cope with the century date change problem. As CIO of InfoDevBank Sr. Guedes has traveled extensively thoughout Latin America and Europe. He has met at Cabinet level with many countries. His presentation on the 13th was one of consistent bad news. His closing words were that all should exercise extreme caution when dealing with Latin American partners.

His presentation examined the current state of remediation in Latin America but he also stated that Germany was far behind. He stated that the report on Paraguay which appeared on the front page of the Washington Post last week reporting serious problems in Paraguay was overly optimistic. Given that the Washington Post report began its report on Paraguay with a scenario of total collapse of the electrical grid, water system, telephone network, rioting and martial law being imposed one wonders about any optimism being possible. (Washington Post, Sunday, October 10th, Page A01)

Change of Stance

In his presentation of December 1998 Sr. Guedes was quite humorous and was well prepared with amusing anecdotes illustrating the foolishness of Y2k alarmists. Yesterday there were no jokes but rather sarcasm mixed with irony. He began by noting that there were only 54 working days remaining. He said that no country would be finished. Some would be more prepared than others but no one would be ready. He asserted that many countries are insisting on an optimistic We will be 100% ready stance instead of acknowledging that all systems would not be repaired and doing realistic contingency planning for failures. He held up, as a positive example, Jamaicas Prime Minister, Mr. Powell, who had candidly admitted that Jamaica would not complete the work until 2004. He believed that the insistence on optimism by countries would backfire when failures occurred.

Reasons for Pessimism

Sr. Guedes was at some pains to clarify the reality in developing countries. He took issue with assessments which downplayed the amount of possible damage in developing countries due to the relative scarcity of computers in the infrastructure. His point was that while there might be fewer computers all of them were critical.

He noted the following problems for Latin America.

1. Late and misleading information from vendors. Cf. Infoliants recent report that the past month had seen the largest downward revision of software readiness at a time when increased compliancy and repair was expected.

2. In the mainframe world the systems were legacy systems with no documentation.

3. The mainframes themselves were old hardware and the skill sets needed for them were not available due to a brain drain to the United States where the number of H1B visas had been increased to allow foreign programmers easy entry and more salary.

4. In the personal computer area illegal and unregistered software was present in 60% of government offices. Ergo no support or upgrades from software companies.

5. 80% of PCs were using Windows 3.1 with a small percentage using Windows 95. 6. The PCs themselves were not compliant with BIOS problems. He was scathing about the dumping of non-compliant computers into developing countries by manufacturers when they discovered their inventory was not Y2k compliant. The number of compliant PCs discovered after a survey of 14,000 machines was under 1%.

7. Some upgrades and fixes had been offered by Microsoft but the offer was made on CD-ROM media which is not available on the obsolete PCs in Latin America.

8. The suggestion that governments in Latin America should use the internet to upgrade software and seek information ran headlong into the fact that less than 5% of government offices have any internet access.

9. Lack of money. Only Mexico and Chile had budgeted for Y2k work.

10. Disasters and elections. Honduras has lost 30 years of public works due to Hurricane Mitch. Ecuador lost its coastal fish farming sector to an earthquake last year. Elections have meant the outgoing government has not been concerned and incoming governments have no interest in the issue.

11. Last but not least, he drew attention to the fact that there was no word for procrastination in Spanish.

-- Drac (Itisdifferentthistime@dowswansong.com), October 21, 1999

Answers

Manana

-- (senor@jose.jimenez), October 21, 1999.

La palabra es:

"maqana".

---- Guillermo

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), October 21, 1999.

Hoff, Flint, Anita Spooner, Marma, Decker, Davis do you believe me now?? Do you need more evidence? Oh, I see, as Hoffy has said, you don't care because you think it won't affect you? Please read on, you fools.

Ed Yourdon, Sysman, Big Dog, King of Spain, and the rest of the gang, question for you:

Does a species as stupid as ours deserve to survive ?

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), October 21, 1999.

No. But maybe some of the human race will survive and next time around we'll get it right. Let's hope so, anyway.

-- Eleanore Mameli (eleanore@island.net`), October 21, 1999.

Somebody please turn me on to a good table of escape characters - tildes, trademark symbols, etc...

Hey, George, good to hear from you again.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), October 21, 1999.

George -- I certainly have my moments of fury here, as many have seen, but it's not really with the pollies on our board but with the vacuum of old-fashioned moral and political leadership around the world. The pollies just reflect that same culture.

People will die because of this asinine crisis -- and perhaps lots of people.

I feel nothing but sadness and a certain forboding, of course. Don't get me started (being a religious fanatic!) on what we deserve, but rather on what, by grace, we might yet receive UNdeservedly.

I am very much looking forward to your "ground zero" reports on the area both pre- and post-rollover.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 21, 1999.

Slip

-- banana peel (pink@away.we.go), October 21, 1999.

Adios, amigos.

-- Dog Gone (layinglow@rollover.now), October 21, 1999.

in short, NO

but some of us might squirm through anyway.

buying more tuna,

Bob P

-- Bob P (Rpilc99206@aol.com), October 21, 1999.

Interesting his mention of Germany, jives with the original reports posted on csy2k re the extreme lateness of Germany's awakening awareness and almost complete lack of leadership there.

It is starting to look like at this late date that some of those mega- death scenarios might come true afterall.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), October 21, 1999.

Eleanore, you are quite right, so let's get Noah's Ark as full as possible, with ample diversity of gene pool content, which means making as many people aware as possible, which means prepping as much as possible.

Lisa, good to hear from you too. I've been lurking mostly, re-reading "old" threads, working hard to save up, and convincing my folks (sorta successful) and prepping up also.

Big Dog, thanks for the input, and please do count on me for reporting directly from the trenches come Jan 2000. By the way Big Dog, I have misplaced your all-important thread entitled : "The Simplicity of Y2K: Why Fix on Failure (FOF) will Fail", or something to that extent. Could you please tell me where to find it in the Yourdon forum files. It's not under "Awareness", so where is it?

Thanks, I need it to convince some hard-headed, all-important individuals around this part of ythe world. Thank you. And congratulations again Big Dog for you extraordinary input you have helped us all with. Take care guys.

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), October 21, 1999.