SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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PLEASE NOTE: The following transcript is a portion of the official hearing record of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Additional material pertinent to this transcript may be found on the web site of the committee at [http://www.house.gov/reform]. Complete hearing records are available for review at the committee offices and also may be purchased at the U.S. Government Printing Office.
57–495 CC
1999
THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM, INDIANAPOLIS: A LOCAL RESPONSE
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
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APRIL 19, 1999
Serial No. 106–15
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/reform
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California
JOHN L. MICA, Florida
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia
DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio
MARSHALL ''MARK'' SANFORD, South Carolina
BOB BARR, Georgia
DAN MILLER, Florida
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ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas
LEE TERRY, Nebraska
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
GREG WALDEN, Oregon
DOUG OSE, California
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho
HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
TOM LANTOS, California
ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington, DC
CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
JIM TURNER, Texas
THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
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HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
———
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont (Independent)
KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director
DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director
DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian
CARLA J. MARTIN, Chief Clerk
PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
Hearing held on April 19, 1999
Statement of:
Cottey, Jack L., sheriff, Marion County, IN; John Spahr, deputy fire chief, Lawrence Township Fire Department; J. Gregory Garrison, CBS legal analyst; and Kate Ekins, manager of public affairs, St. Vincent Hospital and Health Services
Redick, Dennis R., mayor, Noblesville, IN; Charles G. Henderson, mayor, Greenwood, IN; and Carlton Curry, councilman, Indianapolis, IN
Willemssen, Joel, Director, Civil Agencies Information Systems, General Accounting Office; Peter Beering, deputy general counsel, Indianapolis Water Co.; Robert Miller, Indianapolis Water Co.; John Edwards, project manager, year 2000 compliance, Citizens Gas and Coke Utility; Joseph Gustin, vice president, information services, Indianapolis Power and Light; Frank Mitchell, media relations manager, year 2000, Ameritech; and Don Sloan, legislative director, AT&T
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
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Beering, Peter, deputy general counsel, Indianapolis Water Co.; Robert Miller, Indianapolis Water Co.; John Edwards, project manager, year 2000 compliance, Citizens Gas and Coke Utility; Joseph Gustin, vice president, information services, Indianapolis Power and Light; Frank Mitchell, media relations manager, year 2000, Ameritech; and Don Sloan, legislative director, AT&T, presentation of
Burton, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Indiana, prepared statement of
Cottey, Jack L., sheriff, Marion County, IN, prepared statement of
Curry, Carlton, councilman, Indianapolis, IN, prepared statement of
Ekins, Kate, manager of public affairs, St. Vincent Hospital and Health Services, prepared statement of
Garrison, J. Gregory, CBS legal analyst, prepared statement of
Henderson, Charles G., mayor, Greenwood, IN, prepared statement of
Horn, Hon. Stephen, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement of
Mitchell, Frank, media relations manager, year 2000, Ameritech, prepared statement of
Redick, Dennis R., mayor, Noblesville, IN, prepared statement of
Spahr, John, deputy fire chief, Lawrence Township Fire Department, prepared statement of
Willemssen, Joel, Director, Civil Agencies Information Systems, General Accounting Office, prepared statement of
THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM, INDIANAPOLIS: A LOCAL RESPONSE
MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1999
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
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Indianapolis, IN.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9 a.m., at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis University Place, room 132, 850 W. Michigan Street, Indianapolis, IN, Hon. Dan Burton (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Burton, Horn, and McIntosh.
Staff present: Bill O'Neill, director of procurement policy; Lisa Smith-Arafune, deputy chief clerk; Matt Ryan, senior policy director, Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology; Michael Yang, minority counsel; Michael A. Delph, district director; Jim Atterholt, senior policy advisor; and Tim Davis, special assistant.
Mr. BURTON. Quorum being present, we will start this hearing.
Normally, my colleague Steve Horn would be chairing this hearing, but in deference to the chairman of the full committee, he has allowed me to start off this morning. Steve is the man who is the real expert on the Y2K problem. He will be carrying most of the heavy work up here for us. Right?
Mr. HORN. Anything you say, Mr. Chairman. Subcommittee chairmen learn to keep on the good side of the full committee chairman.
Mr. BURTON. Right. Right.
Well, I want to welcome everyone this morning to discuss one of the most pressing issues that our Nation faces as the millennium approaches. The promise of a new century also brings the possibility of chaos, due to the year 2000 computer problem. As you know, the Y2K bug is the software lines of computer code that, if not fixed when the millennium comes, has the potential to wreak havoc worldwide.
Virtually every governmental and private-sector organization is affected by this most pressing problem. I am quite pleased to have my good friend from California, Steve Horn, who chairs the Government Management, Information, and Technology Subcommittee with me at today's hearing. Chairman Horn is recognized as the leading expert in the Congress on Y2K, and is cochairman of the House task force on the year 2000 problem. He has been holding hearings on this issue for over 3 years, and has been instrumental in raising public awareness of the potential problems we face if we don't take action and take it quickly.
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A significant milestone in the Federal Government's effort to update its computer systems for the year 2000 has just been passed. On March 21st, the President's deadline for all mission-critical computers to be year-2000 compliant, 92 percent of the government's departments and agencies reported that their 6,123 mission-critical computer systems are ready for the new millennium. Only 3 short years ago, several agencies were unaware of the programming glitch that could shut down or corrupt their computer systems on January 1, 2000.
The Federal Government has made tremendous progress in its effort to be Y2K compliant; however, 8 percent of the government's mission-critical systems failed to meet the President's March 31st deadline. These systems found within 11 Federal agencies are vital to the health and well-being of millions of Americans. They must be fixed before we can focus on end-to-end testing.
As there are numerous interactions between Federal and non-Federal computer systems, the purpose of this hearing is to assess the level of preparedness of non-Federal entities. Today we will examine the local response to the Y2K problem. We will hear testimony from local government officials, emergency response agencies, and utility concerns on how they are working to resolve their Y2K problems.
The public depends on the uninterrupted flow of service from their utility providers. They expect the phone to ring, and the water and electricity to flow. When there is a problem, they expect their police and fire departments to respond and to be able to obtain health care services. The public needs to be assured that these services will continue. If this is not the case, they need to know what is being done to correct this now, and what contingencies are planned in case of interrupted service.
This forum is of perfect opportunity to see how America's heartland has prepared to meet the challenge to become Y2K compliant. The citizens of Indianapolis have a right to expect that their local government and service providers are doing all that they can to make sure that they enter the millennium Y2K compliant.
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We have an excellent panel of witnesses, and I look forward to hearing their testimony on the challenges that they all face, solutions they have implemented and the lessons they have learned in working on this vital issue. I would like to say the reason we are having this here in Indianapolis is because we wanted to find out what major cities, like Indianapolis, across the country are doing to be Y2K compliant.
I thought since Indianapolis is the 11th or 12th largest metropolitan area in the country, and since I am chairman of the committee, that this would be the best place to do this. But my colleague Steve Horn has been all over the country having these hearings. And with that, let me yield to him for some opening remarks.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]
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[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. HORN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Last fall we were here in Indianapolis, and the chairman had to be in Washington dealing with the Attorney General on one of our major national scandals, and how we do something about it. The year 2000 ''millennium bug'' has turned into a metaphor for the potential computer problems that are associated with January 1, 2000, around the world. And they go back to the 1960's.
Some of you will remember rooms such as this with mainframe computers from one end to the other and very little capacity. Your personal computer has more capacity than most of those mainframes. So when you get to the year 2000, what happens is that to get more space, they said, why do we have to put 19 in when we put in 1967? Let's just put 67. And that became the standard throughout the industry.
The result is, when you get to January 1, 2000, you end up with a zero-zero, not a 67 or a 1967. And so computers all over the world have to be adjusted that way. And even when you have yours set up and adapted, the facts are that you might be polluted again by computers that are not adapted to a situation where they will know it is the year 2000, because it will think it is the year 1900. And computers are only as good as we program them. So this is a massive reprogramming situation.
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We started on this in April 1996 when the Federal Government was doing absolutely nothing about it. The Social Security Administration had done it on its own from 1989, and it took them 10 years to be 100 percent compliant. They weren't compliant until this year. But you can tell all your friends the Social Security checks will be around.
And the same will be, I think, with Medicare; they are coming along.
But we do have some real problems in the Federal Government.
The Federal Government at this point has spent $8 billion to fix its computer system. The original estimate of the Gartner Group was that we would be spending $30 billion. My guess was we would spend $10 billion, and I think my guess—and I have absolutely, complete ignorance on this subject, and I don't claim to be an expert, but my instincts are pretty right on this one—they might well go to $10 billion. And it is considered a $600 billion worldwide problem by the Gartner Group, which is one of the leading consultant services.
So what we wanted to do, as the chairman said, is start seeing what the major cities have done at this point, and so that is why we are in Indianapolis. We have also visited Dallas, New York, and New Orleans. The bottom line is, any one of the entities that make up the modern major city, be it utilities, the government, whatever, that affects our lives, can have a very difficult impact on citizens. What we want to avoid is some of the panic scare that some people have already done, and you will see a lot more of it. That is why we think we ought to go out and see what is going on.
The danger comes when somebody is trying to sell a book, which a lot of them have. I have a closet full of them from all over America, where people have tried to scare the living daylights out of people.
And that doesn't mean you can't be prudent. You can be prudent, and it isn't a panic to say it. Make sure you've got your records in case some bank didn't adapt, but the banks have done very well. Mr. Greenspan, I discussed that with him 2 1/2 years ago, and Governor Kelly of the Board of Governors has been in charge of that effort, and they have done a fine job. We have checked them with the banks, the clearinghouse, the stock markets; all of those were working on this 3 years ago. So I think we are safe on that bit.
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But there are some places in the United States where they don't quite get the message. This is not one of them, because we had a very good hearing here last fall.
But with the computers to work, we need power, for example. That is why we are going to talk to various entities in the electrical power, whether it be hydro or wind or solar, or whatever it is, because if that power goes down, the business, say, of the strike at Flint, MI, a few months ago, that will be a drop in the bucket.
It would put the whole Midwest out. And after a few days, if there wasn't some way, it would come back on, you would be letting go thousands of workers. That is what we want to avoid. So we think rational business will do it.
I think we have a lot of other things we could say on this, Mr. Chairman, but I would just like my statement to be put in the record as if read.
Mr. BURTON. Without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Stephen Horn follows:]
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[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. BURTON. I would like to welcome our colleague, Mr. McIntosh. He is chairman of the National Economic Growth, Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee.
David, do you have some comments you would like to make?
Mr. MCINTOSH. Just very briefly.
Chairman Burton, let me say thank you for holding this hearing here. In particular, I welcome our colleague Mr. Horn, who has frankly done more than anybody that I know of in the government to make sure that we are focusing on this issue; and he did it far before the rest us even really understood the problem and the potential problem. And so we owe him a debt of gratitude for leading that effort in his subcommittee.
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I want to thank you for that, Steve.
Mr. HORN. Well, I thank the gentleman. He is a fellow subcommittee chairman, and he has done an outstanding job. And you can see how we get in Congress when we say nice words about each other.
Mr. MCINTOSH. That is right.
Mr. HORN. Somebody has got to say nice words to us.
Mr. BURTON. Mutual admiration.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Exactly. But so everybody puts it in context, Steve really has spent the last several years focusing on an issue that many in Congress said, that is down sometime in the future, we don't have to worry about it. And he has. We have all been helped as a result of it.
I want to thank the panelists today for coming. I have talked to many of them about it; just asking, Are we ready? You will be favorably impressed, Steve, that the business community here in Indianapolis has gotten ahead of the curve and has done a good job. But with that Chairman Burton, thank you very much for having this hearing here today.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you. Before I go to the first panel, let me just say that one of the main purposes of this hearing is to try to allay some of the fears that people have. My brother and a lot of other people have been getting information that leads them to believe that they should buy generators and have them close to their home, and have gas supplies and everything else, because January 1st there may be a glitch that closes down the electricity. Some people are even buying guns and everything else to protect themselves against their neighbors.
So one of the things that I think is important is that the public be well informed about the situation so that they don't get hyper. I think you touched on that, Steve. And for that reason, I think what we are talking about today hopefully will be discussed all over this country, so people will not go off the deep end and start doing crazy things, and wasting a lot of money that they don't have to.
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Our first panel—and I want to say, I am glad we have one of our major supporters in getting this information out to the people, Greg Garrison, who is on television and radio quite a bit; has his own radio show here. He has been telling the people about the Y2K problem. I appreciate you being here, Greg, and testifying as well so that you can get the message out to the hinterlands about what the real situation is.
Mr. GARRISON. My pleasure.
Mr. BURTON. Our first panel is Mr. Joel Willemssen. We normally swear you folks in, but I am not going to have you all stand up at one time and swear you in, because I know you are going to tell the truth, and I don't want you to turn the table over.
So we have Mr. Joel Willemssen. He is the Director of Civil Agencies Information Systems at the General Accounting Office. Are you out of Washington?
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BURTON. Welcome to Indiana. And also on our panel is Mr. Peter Beering, Deputy General Counsel at the Indianapolis Water Co.
Are you related to Mr. Beering up at Purdue?
Mr. BEERING. Yes, sir, I am.
Mr. BURTON. Your father?
Mr. BEERING. He is.
Mr. BURTON. Well, tell your father we said hello.
Mr. BEERING. I will do that.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Robert Miller of the Indianapolis Water Co.; Mr. John Edwards, project manager for the year 2000 compliance at Citizens Gas and Coke Utility; Mr. Joe Gustin, vice president, information services at Indianapolis Power and Light. We had dinner together last night.
Did you get a good night's sleep?
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Mr. GUSTIN. Yes, sir.
Mr. BURTON. Frank Mitchell, year 2000's media relations manager at Ameritech; and, Mr. Don Sloan, legislative director at AT&T.
And I think that about covers it.
Would you like to start off with a brief overview?
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Yes, I will.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Willemssen.
STATEMENTS OF JOEL WILLEMSSEN, DIRECTOR, CIVIL AGENCIES INFORMATION SYSTEMS, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; PETER BEERING, DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL, INDIANAPOLIS WATER CO.; ROBERT MILLER, INDIANAPOLIS WATER CO.; JOHN EDWARDS, PROJECT MANAGER, YEAR 2000 COMPLIANCE, CITIZENS GAS AND COKE UTILITY; JOSEPH GUSTIN, VICE PRESIDENT, INFORMATION SERVICES, INDIANAPOLIS POWER AND LIGHT; FRANK MITCHELL, MEDIA RELATIONS MANAGER, YEAR 2000, AMERITECH; AND DON SLOAN, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, AT&T
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Subcommittee Chairmen Horn and McIntosh. Thank you for inviting the GAO to testify today. And, as requested, I will give a brief overview on where the Federal Government stands, and then briefly touch on, as requested, some of the lessons learned to date from the leading organizations in dealing with Y2K.
Mr. BURTON. Let me interrupt.
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Certainly.
Mr. BURTON. I hope that the panelists will try to limit their remarks. We have about 3 or 3 1/2 hours here, and if we could limit our remarks to around 5 minutes, that would be very helpful, and then we will get the questions and answers later.
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. Yes. Mr. Chairman, as you noted, the Federal Government has made notable progress in addressing Y2K, now standing at a reported 92 percent of mission-critical systems being compliant.
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A lot of the reason for this improvement has been congressional oversight. Chairman Horn was on this issue 3 years ago, before it was a nationally known issue. He has been out there spurring top agency leadership to move forward on Y2K by holding agencies accountable through hearings, through his report cards, and through other mechanisms. So I think you are right by giving Chairman Horn and other committees within the House and Senate credit for much of the improvement that has been made within the Federal Government.
Nevertheless, despite that improvement, there remains a lot of work to be done. In particular, there are some critical agencies and systems within those critical agencies that are not yet compliant. Notable among those are the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medicare. Many of those systems are not yet compliant. Beyond that individual system compliance, we then have to think about end-to-end testing of multiple systems supporting a key business process. So even when those individual systems have been deemed compliant, there is still a lot of hard work left to be done.
The bottom line on the Federal Government is that while a lot of progress has been made, by no stretch of the imagination are we done with the work that needs to be done.
You also asked me to briefly comment on some of the lessons learned to date from leading organizations. We have put together about 100 reports and testimonies on Y2K covering a wide range of Federal agencies and also State and local governments, and other key economic sectors. Based on that work, and based on what we have seen from some of the leading organizations, I thought I would offer in summary form some of the key elements of key ''best practices'' we have seen of the leading organizations in addressing Y2K.
One, it goes without saying, top agency organization leadership needs to be intimately involved with Y2K. Y2K needs to be viewed as a business problem, not a systems or technical problem. To the extent that that is done, the organizations we have looked at are way ahead of the game in understanding that this is not something that can be shoved off just on the information technology part of the organization, but is truly part of the business and is critical to making sure that those business processes will work as necessary.
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That brings us to the second critical point that we have seen. Increasingly, we have needed to focus on the business functions, as opposed to information technology systems. And that is a bit of a learning curve, especially in the Federal Government. And now the Federal Government is moving more to a program orientation rather than a system orientation. For example, we don't think that the average citizen really cares if a Medicare system works or not. What they care about is that the benefit comes through. And that is where a lot of the focus needs to move.
Third, another critical element is focusing on your partners and your data exchanges. To just focus on your individual business and your individual systems is not good enough. In fact, you could have the best program of any organization, but to the extent you haven't dealt with those critical data exchanges, you run the risk that bad data could come in, infiltrate your systems, and all of that good work that you have done on your systems could go for naught.
Fourth, one of the most important areas within Y2K, testing. The leading organizations are spending between 50 to 70 percent of the total amount of time on Y2K in testing both on individual systems and from an end-to-end perspective. And if organizations today, to the extent that they are not deeply into the testing and through with much of the testing for their individual systems, they are behind the eight ball, and they do need to get moving quickly.
Fifth, another critical component is independent verification and validation. This is essential as another set of eyes to give organizations exactly what the ground truth is on what is going on.
And then to sum up, another critical element: business continuity and contingency planning. No matter how good an organization's efforts are, you have got to have that backup plan in place, so that we can assure the citizens that benefits and services will continue to be provided, even if there are system failures.
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That concludes the summary of my statement, and after the panel is done, I would be pleased to address any questions that you may have.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you. I presume, Steve, that they have given you something in writing on all this?
Mr. HORN. Yes, if I might say, Mr. Chairman, some people in the room might not be familiar with the General Accounting Office. It is part of the legislative branch of the United States, not the executive branch. It reports to the Controller General of the United States. We have a new one that just took office. It is a 15-year term to isolate them from any political pressures by any party. And they do a superb job.
We have several thousand real professionals over there that deal not simply with fiscal matters, but increasingly, as a result of the congressional acts of 1946—but had never been permitted for many years—is the program reviews, and we are looking at all agencies in the Federal Government to have a business plan, have strategic goals, to get a balance sheet. That is the first time that has happened in 210 years of the American Congress and the American executive branch; so they are our eyes and ears.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Steve. I would like to have a copy of your report turned in as well.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Willemssen follows:]
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[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. BURTON. I understand the panel has a presentation that you would like to make. Who is the spokesman for the panel?
Mr. BEERING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Beering.
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Mr. BEERING. My name is Peter Beering from the Indianapolis Water Co. In the interest of the committee's time, what we have done is, the working group for the year 2000 problem with Indianapolis utilities have a coordinated presentation by each utility that lives within one Power Point Presentation. I believe Ms. Arafune is going to operate the lights for us.
What we will do is, after some brief introductory remarks, each of the organizations represented on the panel, alphabetically, will comment on their specific company preparations, and then we will be happy to field questions you or the committee may have.
As you are particularly aware from the fact that you have represented much of the Indianapolis area for many years, the Indianapolis utilities have a long and distinguished history of cooperative relationships. These cooperative relationships speed our responses to all of the problems that our customers face, whether those are weather-related or computer-related, or related to some other problem. We and my colleagues, who are represented here are a portion of the year 2000 readiness efforts of these utilities, have been meeting for the past number of months, and this consortium includes representatives from engineering, operations and administrative departments to each of the representative utilities.
One utility who is not a direct participant in this panel today, but who has been participating with us, is the White River Environmental Partnership. They deliver wastewater treatment and sewer services for much of this community, and some of the surrounding area; they, too, have been participating.
Recently, we have also expanded participation in this committee to include significant representation from the Department of Public Safety, both police and fire, as well as emergency management, and also our colleagues from public work's side of the municipal government, so that our response to whatever problem may be, if any at all, is completely coordinated across the board.
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Each one of the involved organizations has engaged in a series of compliance testing activities. Each of the involved utilities has evaluated and ranked problem systems. Once problem systems have been identified, they are being tested and assessed for compliance. And I am pleased to report that, based on our meetings, that remediation is well under way on the affected systems. Once the remediation efforts have been completed, each of the systems are retested. And an important piece of our testing methodology includes testing for critical dates that may occur prior to the year 2000 event itself.
Although we, as a set of utilities, do not believe that the year 2000 will present any particular service interruptions, we have also engaged in a very elaborate series of contingency planning activities. These contingency planning activities have included, most importantly, the identification of our key facilities and resources, and those locations that we deem to be critical to the uninterrupted service for our customers. These contingency planning efforts, as I mentioned earlier, are being closely coordinated with public safety and public works officials and emergency communications have been planned both within the utility environment themselves and also with the broader public works and public safety community. Several of these communications systems were tested recently, as I believe Mr. Gustin will mention during his more particular testimony.
The mission-critical functions and facilities and supplies have been identified and procured, and that includes fuel sources, as well as key personnel, from each of the utilities. We have also worked out a number of staffing issues related to how we get personnel to our key facilities in the event that there was a problem. One of our particular concerns is that, as you are aware, this past year we had a significant snow event during the New Year's celebration, and we are working on contingency plans to address even that kind of problem.
Beyond contingency planning, communications is a very important part of our activities. We have all appeared in front of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. We are briefing or staff and our key employees, and we are providing information to those who need it. We are also participating, all of the utilities represented here, in regional and national efforts to assist other utilities in their planning efforts.
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Now I believe that Mr. Mitchell from Ameritech will proceed.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. MITCHELL. Chairman Burton, and members of the committee, good morning, and thank you for having us.
My name is Frank Mitchell; I am media relations manager for Ameritech for the year 2000. In that capacity, I have conducted hundreds of interviews with various media on the subject of Y2K and Ameritech's preparedness.
Ameritech has a strong year 2000 initiative in place. Since 1996, Ameritech has been pursing one of our most aggressive undertakings ever, to assure a smooth transition to the 21st century for both Ameritech and its customers. We have established a corporate-wide initiative to address and resolve year 2000 issues, and more than 400 professionals from 31 different disciplines are working on a team that is headed by the year 2000 project leader. It involves every business unit in our corporation. We expect to spend approximately $250 million to address the year 2000 issue.
At Ameritech the year 2000 project leader, Fred Cowitz, reports directly to the executive vice president, who in turn reports directly to the chairman. The project leader not only updates his supervisor on a regular basis, but advises our management committee on a monthly basis of our progress. He also meets with the board of directors every 6 months.
The mission-critical systems remediation work at Ameritech is 99 plus percent complete. From our standpoint, we have reviewed more than 2,500 products or services; remediated an IS portfolio of approximately 1,000 applications; upgraded more than 1,400 central office switches that handle phone calls; analyzed and prepared tens of thousands of desktops and office components, such as telephones, computers and fax machines. And we have prepared access and security systems, heating and cooling plants, alarms and elevators, in 12,000 buildings and equipment vaults. Any remaining remediation activity, testing and deployment has been scheduled and is expected to be completed well in advance of the century date change.
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I will talk about our testing strategies in just a few moments. But our contingency recovery and continuity planning process is well under way. Contingency and recovery plans are already part of our ongoing business on a day-to-day basis. Ameritech has launched a team to develop year 2000 business continuity plans. Things we used to do manually, we may have to learn to do again, in the unlikely event of sustained disruption to our systems, infrastructure or key services provided by our vendors.
Ameritech is encouraging cities and businesses to review their own communications equipment to verify they are Y2K ready and to test them. Ameritech's year 2000 readiness plan generally do not cover customer premises equipment; equipment owned by our customers. Customers will need to contact the supplier or manufacturer of such equipment to determine its year 2000 readiness, and to take all necessary efforts to assure the readiness of their own telecommunications infrastructure. However, in support of our customer efforts, Ameritech is working with its suppliers to determine the year 2000 status of customer-provided equipment and make that information available to our customers.
Ameritech is involved in several Y2K partnerships. Ameritech is a member of the Telco Year 2000 Forum, a nationwide group of major telecommunications companies, and a member of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions. Both of these organizations have conducted extensive interoperability testing, and the results support our contention that the Nation's telecommunications system will operate without disruption during and after the year 2000 date change.
Ameritech is also a member of the FCC-sponsored Network Reliability and Interoperability Council, an ongoing body, and an Ameritech representative is also chairing a committee sponsored by the International Telecommunications Union that is developing a first alert communication plan.
Some additional information, Ameritech's Internet Web site address is www.Ameritech.com/Y2K. Ameritech is sponsoring a forum in different cities throughout the region over the next several weeks to discuss Ameritech's Y2K initiative with cities—city and county officials, with a particular emphasis and focus on 911 systems. In fact, today some of my colleagues are in Cleveland making that presentation and will be in Indianapolis tomorrow.
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Other activities we have done to keep customers informed include customers' visits to our network lab, where testing is conducted at Hoffman Estates, IL. We have produced news releases and quarterly reports that explain our progress, and we have held visits and conference calls about our readiness for telecommunications industry analysts interested in our progress.
On behalf of our year 2000 director, Fred Cowitz, we are pleased to have the opportunity to testify before this committee, and we would like to commend the committee on its efforts to assist in meeting the year 2000 challenge.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mitchell follows:]
INSERT OFFSET FOLIOS 38 TO 48 HERE
[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.
Who is next?
Mr. BEERING. Mr. Sloan from AT&T.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Sloan.
Mr. SLOAN. Good morning. I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, Congressmen, for allowing AT&T the opportunity to brief you on its preparation for the Y2K event.
I would like to say that several years ago AT&T recognized the importance of this Y2K event, and began by putting in place a rather extensive Y2K program. AT&T started with what I will call the executive authority or executive mandate. Our chairman, Mr. Michael Armstrong, brought together all of the different business units of AT&T, as well as the different operational-type, engineering-type people to put together a rather extensive plan.
The first step of that plan started 2 years ago in identifying all of the different relevant systems' piece parts which are necessary for AT&T's network to perform; and, therefore, for AT&T to deliver all of the services that it delivers today to its customers.
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The slide above gives you a brief review of those different systems, and as you can see, it starts off with different software programs which AT&T has written to run its network, to bill for services rendered, and to provision those services.
Next drop down to the internal computer infrastructure which AT&T uses to run its day-to-day business; that would be our own local area networks and PCs that we use. Then there is the traditional gold-plated AT&T long distance network, which would include both the voice network, you are most familiar with, as well as all of the advanced ATM, frame relay and data networks. And then finally, there are very simple things like burglar alarms, air conditioning, heating, ventilation, things that are absolutely necessary for our buildings to operate.
I would like to give you an idea of the immensity and complexity of the AT&T program. And as a, what I will call ''a phone company,'' our tasks are somewhat similar to what Ameritech would have to do. We have literally gone through our entire network. We have inventoried all of the different pieces of plug-in equipment, vendor equipment, fiber optic equipment, digital equipment. Everything was—had to be inventoried and assessed for its impact on services if, in fact, there was a Y2K problem.
Upon inventory completion, there had to be an assessment of each and every piece of equipment in the AT&T network for its vulnerability and then a separate test plan, and contingency plan put in place.
At this point in time, I would like to state that the network has been completely tested, and I qualify that by saying the AT&T network. In addition to working on our own internal issues, our chairman is the chair of the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council, and it is through this council that we work very closely with other companies, such as GTE, Ameritech, traditional phone companies. We work very closely with vendors who provide telco equipment—Lucent Technologies, Ascend—pretty much anyone who is in the telephone business providing equipment to AT&T and other phone companies.
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And it is very important to us that not only the AT&T network be certified, but that by working very closely with our vendors—and we trust our vendors—but by working very closely with our vendors we agree that their equipment is Y2K complaint and, therefore, will work with our own network.
In addition, International Forums was mentioned by one of my colleagues, International Forums. Let me just state that both on a national level, as well as internationally, we are meeting, and sharing information. And at this point in time we are testing our networks and the services that ride on those networks across an AT&T environment, through for example, an Ameritech environment, into customer provided equipment, such that we can feel fairly confident that after the Y2K event, services will be delivered all the way, end-to-end, to customers without any interruption.
Most of the things that we have started have been completed already, and there are a few things yet to be done. Items we are still doing include final contingency planning and this end-to-end testing. We have done the network end-to-end testing, and now we are working on the international end-to-end testing making sure that calls, data, other information, can reach from, say, a New York to a Paris, a Tokyo to a California. We expect the completion of AT&T's Y2K work, including all of the contingency planning, to be complete by the late spring of 1999.
I would just like to summarize that we have made quite significant progress to date, and that all of the AT&T upper management, including its CEO, are very actively engaged. Funding was released for this program several years ago. AT&T has spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and we expect all of our testing and work to be complete very shortly this year.
I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Sloan.
Mr. BEERING. Mr. Edwards.
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Mr. EDWARDS. Chairman Burton, Congressman Horn, Congressman McIntosh, good morning. My name is John Edwards, project manager of the year 2000 program for Citizens Gas and Coke Utility. Citizens Gas has for over 100 years provided safe, dependable natural gas service to the residents of Marion County. Citizens values the relationship with our customers, the trust placed in us by them, and the high level of service expected by them, very seriously.
As you might expect, we have established operating plans which deal with severe weather, natural disaster and general equipment malfunctions. We have established plans to recover those systems necessary to conduct business in such emergencies. These plans allow us to maintain service and make it virtually transparent to the customer when difficulties occur. Our approach to the year 2000 issue is an extension of this mature process.
While somewhat simplistic, there are two basic questions around which we are developing our contingency plans. ''What does it take to maintain gas service to the customer?'' And, ''What does it take to run the business?''
In general, the gas distribution system operates primarily on pressure demand and is not date-time dependent. Equipment used to control the pressure operates pneumatically. Certain critical applications have a level of redundancy and everything is capable of operating in a manual mode. Ultimately, the decision process is controlled by a human.
Mr. Chairman, the following two slides have been extracted from an AGA presentation made to the FERC earlier this year. This specific diagram represents the extent of the natural gas distribution network on a national basis. The following is a slide which depicts the year 2000 readiness based on AGA's latest survey information. I believe you might be familiar with this information, so I will not cover it today.
Translating into something a little bit closer to home, our ability to maintain and in some cases enhance the reliability of our business include: our major business systems, with the exception of our customer information system, now operate using client-server-based technology. The significance is we are no longer tied to the old legacy mainframe system with extensive lines of custom code which are susceptible to the year 2000 problem.
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Recently, all desktop PCs were replaced, along with a standardization on the Microsoft suite of office products, including the NT operating system. We are in the process of upgrading both our customer information system and our internal telecommunication system. Combined, these two systems represent the most critical business systems to our operation.
Our CIS system is currently a legacy mainframe application, which is being transferred to a vended solution, which is client-server based. However, the old system, which is the legacy mainframe system, is being tested as a contingency, on the off chance that the new system is not up and running. So we have ourselves covered on both sides.
Operational readiness relates directly to our ability to maintain gas service to the customer. This system is concerned with both the technical side of mitigating the operational risks, reducing the possibility of a failure, as well as consequence management aspect, the actions we take if it does fail. The activities highlighted allow us to monitor our gas distribution system and safely deliver gas to our customer. Developing specific contingency actions, managing our gas supply portfolio, and having the personnel available to respond are all necessary parts of the overall process.
The sum of our presentation is whether gas will flow on January 1st. Citizens, and the gas industry as a whole, is very confident in its ability to maintain service to the customer. In summary, we view this issue as a real concern at all levels of the organization. We are actively working on remediation. We do not expect problems. However, at the same time, we are developing the necessary contingency plans just in case.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks. And I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you.
Mr. BEERING. Mr. Gustin.
Mr. GUSTIN. Chairman Burton, members of the committee, thank you for allowing us to provide testimony at this field hearing today. My name is Joe Gustin, and I am vice president of information services; and I am also the officer in charge of the Y2K readiness efforts at Indianapolis Power and Light Co.
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Our year 2000 efforts are directed by an ad hoc steering committee comprised exclusively of corporate officers; that committee meets regularly and provides a general oversight to the Y2K efforts of the corporation. Reporting to that steering committee is a compliance testing committee and a contingency planning group. In all, we have 43 employees with direct responsibility to those three committees, and another 100 to 150 employees in the field and in our generating plants actually performing the testing.
Mr. BURTON. I would ask that you would just take the microphone and bring it up so the back row can hear. Just move it.
Is that better? Great.
Mr. GUSTIN. We have 43 employees that have a direct responsibility to these three committees and another 100 to 150 employees in the field doing the actual testing, remediation, and planning.
Our compliance testing committee is responsible for searching all areas of our business and all of our business functions that have a possibility of being affected by the year 2000. Things such as computers, computer programs, vendors that provide critical services and equipment with date-sensitive embedded computer chips all have the potential of impairing our ability to provide electric service to our customers. That inventory is essentially complete, with those items being ranked as either critical or noncritical to our business. Parenthetically, I would say that we class this inventory as ''essentially'' complete because I think it is important that throughout this process we always continue to look for problems in our business.
Our assessment of those points are complete as well, and we are well into remediating those systems that we knew either up front were not Y2K compliant or that have failed our testing protocol. We anticipate having all of those critical systems ready and Y2K compliant. We have also contacted over 100 critical vendors, and we have received statements from many of those vendors stating they will be compliant and provide services into the new millennium. And we continue to work with remaining vendors to assess their individual states of readiness.
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Contingency planning is our second line of defense in the event compliance testing overlooked a point in the inventory process, or if a point was remediated improperly, or in the event that there is a disturbance from outside our service territory that comes in to us through the grid. We have identified roughly 50 core business functions and we have Y2K contingency plans for all of those systems.
We expect the testing and validation of those plans to be complete by the end of the second quarter. Concurrently, we are conducting testing on the plans that are finished and we expect to have all of our training finished by the end of the third quarter. We then the fourth quarter this year to do the final staging, preparation and rehearsal.
I would like to talk about three issues that are critical to IPL and our ability to provide electricity to our customers. Electric utilities are connected to a common transmission grid that traverses the entire country. And because of this interconnection, there is a possibility that faults in one system can travel through the grid and enter another system through the points of interconnection. It is because of this possibility that the North American Electric Reliability Council, NERC, and the Department of Energy are closely monitoring the progress of all electric utilities in conducting coordinated contingency planning drills.
The next slide shows the geographical division of NERC. Indiana is part of the East Central Area of Reliability council, ECAR. We submit monthly reports to ECAR stating our readiness and what we have accomplished. ECAR compiles those reports and responses from all of the member utilities and sends a monthly report to NERC. And then NERC, as you know, sends quarterly reports of this progress to the Department of Energy.
At Indianapolis Power and Light Co., we have a very sophisticated energy management system that maintains system frequency by balancing the flows of electricity into and out of our system with our customer load and the amount of electricity being generated by our units. We have tested, remediated, and retested this energy management system, and we are pleased to report that this very critical system has been successfully operated for an extended period of time in the year 2000. We participated in the NERC April 9th drill to test the contingency plans for loss of normal communications. This test simulated complete loss of traditional communications between generating stations, substations and central operating centers. That test for us was an unqualified success. We were able to control and dispatch our entire electric system using Y2K-compliant backup communications.
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On September 8th and 9th, there will be another drill. And that drill will be essentially a full dress rehearsal for the utility industry. We will also participate in that.
As far as generation is concerned, all of our major generating units over 50 megawatts have been operated in the year 2000 as part of our testing protocol. All but one of those units are currently operating in the year 2000 date mode, and we intend to leave them in that mode until after the real year 2000 arrives; then their internal clocks will be reset to actual time. We have contingency plans in place for those units, and they are being tested now and we will be able to launch those if necessary.
And finally, I would like to turn to business functions. Last year we began converting all of our legacy mainframe systems to Y2K-ready Oracle financials. We finished that conversion at the end of 1998. And on January 4th of this year we went live with all of our financials on that Oracle system.
Our service restoration program still resides on the mainframe computer. This is the program we use in the event of an outage to track incoming calls, analyze outage patterns, and help dispatch our crews to efficiently restore service. That program has been converted to a Y2K compliant version.
Our shareholder services program will also remain on the mainframe, and it too has been converted to Y2K-compliant conversion.
Finally, our customer billing system is the last major program that will remain on the mainframe. We are in the process of remediating that legacy system right now and expect to finish that effort within the next 30 to 40 days.
So, in summary, Indianapolis Power and Light, has a Y2K plan in place, and that plan is very active. It has high visibility, and high priority within our corporation. We have successfully completed the April 9th drill and will participate in the September 8th and 9th drill. We are actively engaged with other city utilities and the Metropolitan Emergency Management Group, coordinating our respective year 2000 contingency plans. And our goal is to have all our critical systems ready to go by June 30.
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Thank you.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Gustin.
Mr. BEERING. Mr. Miller from the Indianapolis Water Co.
Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to tell you how Indianapolis Water is prepared for the year 2000.
We are the largest private investor-owned water utility serving a metropolitan area. We have been serving Indianapolis since 1881. Today, we have an average demand of 132 million gallons a day serving over 240,000 customers. Our primary source of supply is here locally, consisting of three reservoirs, each with a capacity of 7 billion gallons and one ground water major source on the south side of Indianapolis, which, when filled out, will have the capability of 80 million gallons a day capacity.
We have been working closely with the other utilities to identify critical facilities for the past year. And internally we have been checking out our pump valve and purification control, hardware and software for year 2000 compliant. And we are in the process of updating our latest little item, which is a $700 auto dialer.
Our internal IT people, they are working on the software for billing and customer service, and that will be completed by—June 1st is their target deadline. We have 6 million gallons of elevated storage of water, and another 60 million gallons of underground finish water that can be pumped into the system.
At our major facilities, we have diesel generators to drive the treatment process and engine-driven pumps to pump the water out into the system, should we lose power or there be a major ice storm or any other natural emergency. We have 3 days' of fuel at these facilities and we will have arrangements for additional fuel tankers to be on the property should an event occur and last of any length.
In summary, Indianapolis Water has an average day demand of 132 million gallons a day. We anticipate on a typical New Year's Eve, usage of 100 million gallons, and with our generators and pumps, we can treat and pump 160 million gallons a day into the system, ensuring that these flows will assure to the community adequate fire protection and normal water usage.
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Thank you.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you.
[The presentation of Messrs. Beering, Miller, Edwards, Gustin, Mitchell, and Sloan follows:]
INSERT OFFSET FOLIOS 49 TO 86 HERE
[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. BEERING. Mr. Chairman, that concludes the formal presentation on the part of the utilities panel. We would be happy to field any questions that you or your colleagues may have.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you.
You can turn the lights up a bit now. Mr. Horn, do you want to start with the questions?
Mr. HORN. Actually, I would be glad to yield to Mr. McIntosh. If he doesn't cover something, why I will be glad to jump in.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Thank you. I had just a couple of questions that came up as a result of the presentation, which I thought were very impressive.
You mentioned, Mr. Mitchell, that you had been working with your customers on making sure that the equipment that they own and operate, that they are aware of potential problems. What are you finding in that inventory?
I imagine there is a range from some equipment that is Y2K compliant and some that isn't anywhere near it. How would you evaluate the risks to the system and the different customer equipment that you are aware of?
Mr. MITCHELL. As you said, Congressman, it is all of the above. Those items and pieces of equipment, or pieces of telecommunications equipment that might connect to our network, we are listing those on our Web site. We are informing customers as we interface with them. The volume of that, the size of the problem, is not overwhelming. I wouldn't be able to put a percentage on it at this time.
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Mr. MCINTOSH. Is most of it business customers that have, say, Centrex or other types of exchanges?
Mr. MITCHELL. Primary PBXs, private lines, that kind of thing. They need to be aware primarily.
Mr. MCINTOSH. How about for residential users? Is there a list of different fax machines or telephones that they might have that you guys keep track of, some of the companies said, these work, and others you don't have information on?
Mr. MITCHELL. Yes. Others we don't have information on; that is correct.
The other piece of information you should be aware of is the equipment itself may indeed work after the year 2000, but certain functions that are time and date sensitive stamp may not. Such as, When did the fax come in? It may have come in on January 1, 1900, based on the date on the top of the fax, but it indeed came in.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Right. So people will have to figure out their own systems and take a look at them and see what they might need to do, correct minor problems like that.
Mr. MITCHELL. That is what we are recommending, yes.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Do you plan to do any mailings or distribution to your customers with that information?
Mr. MITCHELL. We have some mailings that we will be doing, particularly on the equipment we own, for instance, with 911 systems. We have several different manufacturers of the equipment. We don't do manufacturing ourselves, so when we complete all the 911 systems that are manufactured by Lucent, when we know those are Y2K ready, we send out a mass mailing to the 911 systems.
We have got about 850 public safety agencies we support in the five-State area Ameritech operates in. So we will be sending those out in May.
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Mr. MCINTOSH. The only other question I want to ask at this point was to Mr. Edwards.
I noted you indicated that you had changed your computer and were keeping the legacy computer in place. Do you see other benefits, essentially for that changeover, that perhaps were spurred on by the necessity of being Y2K compliant?
Mr. EDWARDS. Of maintaining the legacy system?
Mr. MCINTOSH. No, of transferring to the new one.
Mr. EDWARDS. It is a realization of greater business technology more than anything. That is really what drove the process to move, to being that transformation of going from the legacy system into the client service system. Certainly, the year 2000 has helped accelerate some of that activity, but that wasn't the initial driving impact in this instance.
Mr. MCINTOSH. The reason I asked is, I have heard anecdotally that there may actually be a benefit to the economy in the sense that many businesses have chosen to accelerate some of the efficiency gain—or technology transfers that could lead to efficiency gains, and yours seems to be a potential example of that.
Mr. EDWARDS. That is correct. We really looked to advance the business and move forward. With deregulation of the natural gas industry, the legacy systems don't support that, so we had to make that move initially. That is really a business issue.
Mr. MCINTOSH. OK. Those are the only questions I have, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. McIntosh.
Mr. Horn.
Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just along Mr. McIntosh's point, let me ask one semirelated to that last question, and that is the degree to which you found this exercise in trying to figure out the impact of the year 2000 on your particular systems, has that enabled you to really go through and think through the various mission critical systems that each of the firms have? And have you decided that it has nothing to do with the year 2000, that, Hey, we really don't need that system or we need a better system, et cetera? How often has that happened with you?
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In other words, I am trying to look for the constructive aspects of not just repairing something on the year 2000 bit, but what has it done to improve—and this is Mr. McIntosh's question, too, I think—What has been done to improve your own business once you gave it some thought? You know the old line of ''garbage in, garbage out.'' And sometimes these systems just grow up, and nobody takes a look at them and says, Do we really need to do this, or is there a better way to do it? Because all computers do is reflect what your own decisionmaking ought to be in any particular firm.
Do you want to start down the line, Mr. Beering? Have there been any situations where you have gotten rid of systems that have nothing to do with the year 2000?
Mr. MILLER. I will just speak for the water company, Mr. Beering and myself. Yes, as we start this process, our biggest, major investment to date is replacing our phone system, which is 1976 vintage. And it is driven—it will still function in the year 2000. We won't have the date stamp. But as of 1999, replacement parts are no longer being made. That forced us to look at something that was becoming obsolete instead of becoming obsolete and catching us after the fact.
Being acquired by NIPSCO Industries 2 years ago, just for efficiencies and consolidations, we have gone through a process of changing over all of our financial packages and accounting packages, and as I had mentioned, customer information services, just were more efficiencies, and going to the platform migrations.
Mr. HORN. Any thoughts on that?
Mr. EDWARDS. Just to add to my comment to Mr. McIntosh. We had found several obsolete packages that were being used that were being supported for no reason, and those, obviously, have been eliminated. But again, I would really like to drive home the point it is a business opportunity for us; by upgrading and moving our technology forward, we are certainly capable of being able to do more.
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Mr. BURTON. Can you put the microphone in front of you? They can't hear you in the back.
Mr. HORN. Go ahead.
Mr. EDWARDS. As I said, it is really a business issue, as we advance the technology, to allow us to do a better job of doing the business of being in business. It really is an enhancement to our system and supports our overall efforts toward the natural gas industry and serving the residents of Marion County.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Gustin.
Mr. GUSTIN. Speaking for IPL, one of our biggest expenditures in the last 2 years has been the conversion of our financials from mainframe legacy systems to Oracle. I can say that decision wasn't made entirely as a result of Y2K, although we are getting some year 2000 benefits from that. But that move to enterprise resource planning has given us the opportunity to access information much easier than we could have with the legacy systems; it has given us the ability to analyze and convert that data, that information into knowledge.
As far as examining some of our business functions, we have a very comprehensive set of disaster recovery plans, as you might well expect for an electric utility. Part of the Y2K effort, though, has caused us to go back and review every one of those disaster recovery plans. We have made some modifications to those, and because of the year 2000, we have added things to those existing plans. So year 2000 has made us improve those types of disaster recovery issues.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. MITCHELL. One of the learnings I think for Ameritech, and maybe for business in general, has been, we have probably got the most extensive comprehensive inventory of what is in our systems that we have ever had. That means some of the things, some of the embedded systems that have been built on top of each other over the years, no longer are really necessary. And as Mr. Edwards said, we have eliminated those. And where we can, we—we do that very restfully.
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We also look at upgrading things now in 1999 that we were going to do in the year 2000 or beyond. We have accelerated those to include that this century. Those are going to be representing tremendous cost savings for the company.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Sloan.
Mr. SLOAN. Excuse me. Thank you.
There are two main advantages, or opportunities rather, that the Y2K problem presented us with. First, like the other firms present before you, we did have an opportunity to fully assess all of the different equipment and systems that we had, and we speeded up the retirement of some of those systems.
Because of the digital revolution, a lot of what is in the AT&T network is fairly new, installed in the last 10 or 15 years. So we do not have some of the problems maybe that some other folks have. But at the same time, we did have some carryover systems that we looked at, and it was a matter of, Do we make it Y2K compliant or do we just simply retire it? And so we opted for early retirement of those systems.
The second item, which is a little subtle, is that this Y2K problem gave us, as an industry, an opportunity to get together. And as you all know, if one part of the industry standardizes on one set of standards, and another wants a different set of standards; if we are not working together, having this engineer meet with that engineer; and having those type of relationships exist between policymakers a little bit higher up, then sometimes you have the Tower of Babel, where things just don't work together as well as they should, or perhaps at all. So I saw it as an excellent opportunity for us to meet on a regular basis and to sit down with a lot of our brethren in the telecommunications industry.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I see my time is up. I hope we have a second round here, but I think you probably have some questions. Do you want to do it now?
Mr. BURTON. Why, thank you. I will ask a couple questions, and I will yield back to you, Mr. Chairman. I liked your biblical metaphor.
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Let me start off by saying—by asking a question about the electrical system at Indianapolis Power and Light. When you sent out billings—and you and I talked about this last night, so this is more for public consumption because I think you answered my question—there was some concern among a lot of the people who received the billing and the information that there might be an outage or outages as a result of the Y2K problem. And last night at dinner, I think you elaborated on that to me and indicated that this would not be out of the norm.
So could you, for the benefit of anyone else who is paying attention, go into that in some detail?
Mr. GUSTIN. Yes, I would be glad to. I think there may have been some negative reaction by some of our customers regardng that first statement that was issued. What we intended to get across to our customer base, though, is that they should take a look at how they use electricity in their own lives, because there are many things other than year 2000 that could affect service and delivery—tornadoes, ice storms, cars hitting light poles on the corner; those types of things can also stop the flow of electricity to customers. And we thought it was important that we just refresh that in our customers' minds, and take a look at how, in fact, they use electricity and how important it was to them.
We don't guarantee electric service. We don't guarantee uninterrupted flow of electric service, but I hope that as our customers see these presentations and learn and understand the types of efforts that we have put into Y2K remediation that we all benefit from the situation.
Mr. BURTON. I guess the point I wanted you to make, and I hope it is clear is that you don't anticipate anything that would cause outages any more than you would if there was an ice storm or a tornado or a car hitting an electric utility pole and knocking out the service.
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So you don't think there are any unusual things that are going to happen because of the grid system or anything like that?
Mr. GUSTIN. Well, I don't know that I can foretell what things might happen with the grid. But as each day goes by, we see that more and more utilities are, as we are, I feel, having all of their units already operating in year 2000; having their main computer systems operating in the year 2000. The likelihood of problems goes down every single day.
Mr. BURTON. Well, let me ask it one more way, so we can be as clear as possible.
Is the likelihood of an outage because of the grid system, or something related to the Y2K program, is it any greater than we would have from an ice storm, for instance?
Mr. GUSTIN. Mr. Chairman, I don't know that I can really answer that question. I don't know.
Mr. BURTON. OK.
Ameritech, in your comments, you said that the suppliers were going to be responsible for informing individuals and companies about problems that might have—they might have with equipment outside of your control. Are you working with and contacting those suppliers to make sure that they are informing the customers that there might be a problem with their equipment?
Mr. MITCHELL. Absolutely. We have got a very comprehensive supplier management program in place.
Mr. BURTON. So are you working hand in glove with them to make sure that the customers are all informed that there might be a problem beyond your control that the supplier would have to deal with?
Mr. MITCHELL. Absolutely. We are telling the customers on one hand, but we are certainly advising the suppliers they have to take action, too.
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Mr. BURTON. Are any of you affected by something that might happen in another part of the world? I know there are many of us in Congress that have heard that there might be an interruption of oil supplies because of the Middle East—because they are not computer Y2K compliant. Would that affect any of your industries or any of your services to the constituents we represent? You don't think it will have any impact?
Mr. GUSTIN. From the electric utility standpoint, we do have units that burn fuel oil for electric generation. Those units only amount to a small percentage of our total installed capacity. The remainder is coal-fired, so I don't see that that would have a long-term adverse effect.
Mr. BURTON. But are you storing reserves just in case of that eventuality?
Mr. GUSTIN. Prior to December 31st we will have an increase in the supply of coal that we would normally have, and we also will have much more fuel oil on hand than we normally have.
Mr. BURTON. So you will have contingency plans made in case there is an interruption of those energy sources?
Mr. GUSTIN. That is correct.
Mr. BURTON. I do want to ask you a question. You mentioned then—this is not of a local nature—but you mentioned that FAA and some of the health care industries at the Federal level were not compliant. A lot of us fly a lot and may be on a plane on January 1st. I would just like to know why the FAA is not compliant, and what can we do to get them compliant. Because I don't want to be up there when the communication goes out.
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. A couple of points on FAA. One, they have got a tremendously late start in addressing with Y2K. When we testified before Chairman Horn in February 1998 many of the basic management mechanisms that should have been in place were not in place. So they were way behind from the start.
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They have made tremendous progress in the last 12 to 15 months under the new administrator, so they have done some great things. Unfortunately, their environment is so computer-intensive and so far flung across the Nation, that there still remains quite a bit that needs to be done, FAA has about 20 major en route centers and about 180 various terminal radar approach control facilities, so there is a lot to do yet. But they are going in the right direction. They have got a good plan in place with a little room to spare, but not much.
Mr. BURTON. Well, let me just followup by saying, are we going to have people at risk in January when these planes go into the air? Will they be compliant by that date, in your opinion?
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. I think, under the current scenario, it is likely that there may be some system failures. Fortunately, FAA has put a lot of effort into a business continuity and contingency plan, so that to the extent that there are some system failures, they will have backups in place. I am fairly confident of that.
I would not be confident in saying that there will be absolutely no problems.
Mr. BURTON. Are you going to be willing to fly on January 1st?
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. I would make that decision based upon data available later in the year, frankly.
Mr. BURTON. I would like you to keep me and the committees informed as much as possible about that.
Mr. HORN. Well, if I might, Mr. Chairman, we have had extensive hearings with the new administrator. She was blindsided by some of her staff, and I told her in my first hearing that, You ought to fire the whole bunch of them. She is an outstanding administrator, and she is doing a good job. They didn't even tell her what was going on for about 6 months.
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So I think, as Mr. Willemssen says on behalf of the analysis of the General Accounting Office, that they are on the right track. I have said I would fly January 1st; that has not pleased my wife. But the administrator would do it. She is going to go Washington-New York. I am going Washington-Los Angeles, assuming we don't vote for 1 or 2 days. So I don't want to miss votes.
But the fact is, they are—they have got it on the right track, and I think we could be optimistic. The fact is that the administrator has complete power from the Congress to give an order to any plane on the ground when it comes to safety. So if they feel there was an overload on the system of radar and whatnot, that she can deal with that, and her people can deal with that delegated authority from her.
So nobody is going to be in an unsafe situation; let's put it that way. We have people running around loose—I even had one on my committee several years ago that said, Oh, planes are going to drop from the sky. Well, hopefully, they will be piloted and landing in a landing field.
It isn't planes dropping from the sky, but there are a lot of people who like to sell books, as I said earlier, or get radio programs, or ratings, or whatever, or TV programs; and I just think that that is nonsense. They are not going to take off. And we will know in time, as Mr. Willemssen says. He is right to wait a little longer in the year until we see what happens.
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. If I may add, Mr. Chairman, I have had several years of experience working with FAA systems. And within the systems environment, safety has always been the paramount issue, so that to the extent that FAA does have some systems-related problems come January 1, 2000, I would expect that not only would they put contingencies in plans, but they will not risk the safety of the flying public.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Would the gentleman yield for another followup in that area?
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Mr. BURTON. Sure.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Mr. Willemssen, I read in the paper recently that they were testing a new computer system at FAA, and that they were not happy with the speed at which they were able to follow the planes. Is that on a separate track for the year 2000, or part of the same one that you were describing?
Mr. WILLEMSSEN. That is on a separate track. And because FAA cannot rely on that replacement system as their Y2K solution, they will have to remediate the existing systems as, again, a backup.
Now, to the extent that some of these new systems come in at the time, great. But we would concur with FAA, not to rely on the replacement system, especially with the problems it is having. It needs to go into the existing system, remediate that to make sure that it works through the change of the century.
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Horn.
Mr. HORN. Just to followup on a couple of questions. A number of you used the phrase, ''contingency plan,'' and Mr. Burton in his questioning got out of one of you what one of those examples was.
When we surveyed the Federal agencies, they keep reporting to us ''in progress.'' In other words, they don't have a contingency plan. Or some of them have the U.S. Postal Service as their contingency plan.
So then we called a hearing with the U.S. Postal Service, and they don't have a contingency plan. And everybody is depending on them to get momma's check out or Aunt Minnie's check or whatever, and instead of electric deposit, which is the sensible way to do things and avoid robbery, burglary, and all the rest that goes on with Federal checks.
But I would just like to go down the line, and if you could tell me, what is the contingency plan that you have. Let's just start in the order, with the water company.
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Mr. Beering, what is the contingency plan?
Mr. BEERING. Congressman Horn, one of the real success stories from Indianapolis is that we have long been on the forefront of emergency planning. In my last position with the Indianapolis Department of Public Safety, I was largely responsible for a complete rewrite of the Indianapolis and Marion County Emergency Operations Plan. That plan, when it was retooled, embraced the local utilities and recognized the importance of having them participate in broader community emergency planning to the quick restoration of normalcy for both the customers and also for the citizens who rely on various city and other services. That planning effort has continued among the utilities that you have heard from this morning. We have——
Mr. HORN. Well, let me just ask this: Is there a grid for water as there is a grid for some aspects of power?
Mr. BEERING. There is not.
Mr. HORN. OK.
Mr. BEERING. We are able to purify and deliver water using engine-driven pumps far in excess of what the anticipated demand would be. And we are also able to help IPALCO in the event that there is a problem, because we can load shave for them. We represent one of their larger customers and are able to spin up our generating and fuel-driven machinery to take some of the burden for them.
Mr. HORN. Well, would you say it would be wise for somebody to at least have a couple of 5-gallon cans of water around?
Mr. BEERING. I think that our consensus recommendation has always been to encourage people to follow both Red Cross and FEMA guidance; and that is, that all citizens should always have 72 hours' worth of supplies available to them. And that would include battery-operated flashlights, battery-operated radio equipment, and enough supplies so that they can sustain themselves.
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Mr. HORN. Well, as has been noted here, the sewage people, the waste disposal people, aren't really represented on this panel.
Does anybody know what they are going to do if you don't have any water and things can't be flushed?
Mr. BEERING. Actually we do. We have had extensive discussions with our colleagues from that particular operation, the White River Environmental Partnership. They have identified 15 out of their, I think, it is 350 lift stations, they have shared with IPALCO, those that are deemed to be the most critical in terms of keeping sewage out of people's basements.
In addition, fortunately, much of the sewage system is a gravity-feed system that does not particularly require electricity. There are certain parts of the process that do require electricity, and they are developing some contingency plans to be able to operate all parts of the collection and treatment system, so that we are not going to have a problem with sewage.
Mr. HORN. Anything to add, Mr. Miller?
Mr. MILLER. Just that we do have a draft written of our contingency plan and have identified key people that can't take vacation.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Edwards, when it comes to the gas company, I am reminded that Russia supplies most of Eastern Europe and some of Central Europe with most of the natural gas. Now, this is all going to occur in the case of Europe, and would also in Indiana—you get some, not exactly sunshine every day in January, so that would be a problem.
And we are told that the refineries have a microprocessor-microchip problem. We are told that the pipelines in Europe have a microchip problem; we are told that the refineries in Europe have a microchip problem.
Do we have a similar problem in Indiana in terms of where your gas sources come from, how they get there so you can utilize them with your customers?
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Mr. EDWARDS. The analogous grid of the natural gas industry, I will refer back to the overview slide of the gas process, which was in the presentation. We get—the primary supply of our gas comes from two major suppliers, and it comes basically out of the Louisiana Gulf area, as well as from the Oklahoma-Texas panhandle area.
The ultimate contingency for us would be a complete failure of that national grid for natural gas distribution. In that case, it reverts back to the way we managed our supply portfolio. Citizens is not unique in the natural gas industry, but we have company-controlled supplies, which on a ultimate failure scenario, would last us, without interruption of service, for at least a week. Certainly, those supplies can be extended.
And the other part of that contingency is to look at our interruptible customers and being able to extend that supply.
Mr. HORN. Is that sort of the national standard, to have at least a week of supplies in the natural gas field?
Mr. EDWARDS. I cannot comment on that, sir, as far as the national standard. It just so happens that the underground and above-ground storage that we have gives us enough supply, based on an average day's use in January, of about 7 days' worth of capacity.
Mr. HORN. How about the contingency plan, Mr. Gustin? Any further comments on that?
Mr. GUSTIN. We don't have a single contingency plan; we have numerous contingency plans for all of our various business functions.
I know there is a concern about the electric grid and what might happen to that. And I don't know that anyone has a real definitive answer. I can tell you that this grid is a very vast and very robust piece of infrastructure. It has over 600,000 miles of transmission distribution lines, it has over 800,000 megawatts of capacity that is installed at various points about the grid; and it would take a very significant disruption to bring that grid down.
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From our perspective, the worst case in any electric utility industry would be the loss of the grid. We have——
Mr. HORN. Well, of the various grids you showed us here, now, is there interchangeability among all of those grids so they could move from the West or the East and give you power if you didn't have them?
Mr. GUSTIN. There is good interconnectability east to west and north to south. There is limited interchange ability however between Texas and the other areas.
From our perspective, we have what is called ''black start'' capability at each one of our generating stations. And in the event that the grid goes down, and there is no electricity flowing, we have the ability to start all of our generating units up from a black start and connect our customer base independent of the grid.
Mr. HORN. And that would take how long?
Mr. GUSTIN. It is hard to tell.
Mr. HORN. A week, 2 days?
Mr. GUSTIN. Probably less than a week.
Mr. HORN. Less than a week. So presumably then we could work our way out of that.
Mr. GUSTIN. We would have the ability to work our way out.
Mr. BURTON. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. HORN. Sure.
Mr. BURTON. If you had that kind of grid catastrophe and interruption, and you say it is up to a week to get those gas-fired generator, oil-fired generators to get started, you are talking about an outage of up to a week, you said?
Mr. GUSTIN. It is possible. I don't think anybody has a good handle on that.
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Mr. BURTON. OK. Let's just say, advising the citizens of Indianapolis for any contingency, what would you advise them to do in the event that there was that kind of a problem with the grid system and the startup time was up to a week? Would you ask them to have generators or what?
Mr. GUSTIN. Well, that is a concern for us. I know that there are a lot of homeowners out there that are buying electric generators. We are concerned about that from a safety standpoint. If those generators are installed improperly, there is a risk of electric shock, explosion, to the homeowner. There is also a risk that our linemen will be exposed to stray currents because of those electric generators.
So I would certainly like to take this opportunity to let all of our customers who have those types of generators know that we have a problem with that. And, please, if you are going to hook those up, get a qualified electrician to do that for you.
Mr. BURTON. Of course. But I guess the question isn't really answered.
Your contingency plan is the black generator option, I guess that is what you call it?
Mr. GUSTIN. ''Black start'' capability.
Mr. BURTON. Black start capability would not be something of an immediate nature? You couldn't start it up—if there is an outage in Indianapolis, you couldn't start it up within a couple of hours?
Mr. GUSTIN. Probably not.
Mr. BURTON. How long would it take, did you say?
Mr. GUSTIN. That is hard to say, because when a unit is up to operating temperature and hot, and it trips off the line, those types of restarts can be done fairly quickly within a couple of hours. But if the unit is cold, it takes a much longer time to do that.
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I think in that particular scenario, more of the problem would come with synchronizing all of the generating units and placing the system back into service, section by section. And I don't know honestly how long that might take. It would be—it would certainly be site specific.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Mr. Chairman, if you would yield for a second.
Mr. BURTON. Steve has the time.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Steve?
Mr. HORN. Yes.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Followup on a question on that: If the grid went down, just so I understand it correctly, and you had to go through this black start, what protection do you have that the electricity you generate doesn't flow outside of the—your area into the grid that has a problem?
Mr. GUSTIN. We are connected to the grid at 11 different points.
Mr. MCINTOSH. Do you disconnect those——
Mr. GUSTIN. Yes, if the grid is completly de-energized.
Mr. MCINTOSH [continuing]. And serve your own customers?
I see.
Mr. HORN. Do you have primarily hydro production of electricity, or are there nuclear reactors involved?
Mr. GUSTIN. No, we have no hydrogeneration, we have no nuclear generation. Our generation portfolio is approximately 95–96 percent coal-fired and the balance oil or natural gas.
Mr. HORN. Let's finish on the contingency plan.
Ameritech, what is our contingency plan?
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Mr. MITCHELL. Well, we operate in the contingency mode quite a bit, as mentioned. The weather we have, summer, winter, things that go wrong, as people are digging, backhoes knock out cable and telephone lines, so we are already prepared to go into contingency mode at any time. So if we lose electricity in the summer, perhaps from a thunderstorm, we have backup batteries as well as backup diesel generators at our 1,400 central offices.
The other thing that we are focusing on, besides the various multiple contingencies, is also business continuity plans. So if for some reason you could not handle the day-to-day business of installing, repairing and maintaining telephone systems, how would we go about that if we had to bill people manually? If we had to get the repair records manually, we are going through that process now, so we will be prepared in that event.
Mr. HORN. Mr. Sloan, anything to add for AT&T?
Mr. SLOAN. Not very much. I think the Ameritech spokesman said it. Our industry is a model for redundancy and contingency planning.
And I would say this. Vacations have been canceled of all management employees a week before Y2K and a week afterwards, such that our customers would be able to get in touch. And regardless of whether there is power and water, we will deliver calls. Customers will be able to call us, as well as anybody else that they choose.
Mr. HORN. See, I remember Washington, DC, when President Kennedy was assassinated, everybody picked up the phone and called home. The switches just couldn't handle it. That is what often happens when people want to share or relate or make sure their relatives are OK. That overload really brings the whole system down.
Are you prepared for that?
Mr. SLOAN. Well, the networks are entirely different than they were in that timeframe. And I will give you a more recent issue we had in the State of Illinois, and it is referred to as the Hinsdale Crisis for those in the telecommunications business. It was a major catastrophe for the telephone business.
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We had a problem in that all of a sudden everyone picked up the phone at the same time to try to call their loved ones, relatives, to see if they were OK.
What happens in a modern telephone network is that when that happens, our engineers that monitor the network, implement what are called ''network controls'' so we can slow down the flow and none of our systems are overloaded.
Customers may experience some delays. However, we will still deliver calls. Volume of calls will not bring the network down.
Mr. HORN. That is my last question, but I would like to have a subunit here of maybe some questions we would be able to send to various gentlemen.
Mr. BURTON. Yes. Would you be willing to respond in writing to us so we could have those in the record?
Mr. HORN. If we missed a few things.
Mr. BEERING. Absolutely.
Mr. BURTON. I want to thank you. It has been a very informative panel, and you are to be congratulated on doing a good job. But I don't know yet whether I will be flying on January 1st, and I am not sure I will buy a generator.
Mr. HORN. I should tell you, Mr. Chairman. I have told the Administrator of FAA she should not be arguing with controllers on January 1st.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Our next panel is going to be elected officials. We have the Honorable Dennis R. Redick, mayor of Noblesville; we have the Honorable Charles G. Henderson, the mayor of Greenwood; and we have the Honorable Carlton Curry, councilman from the city of Indianapolis, representing Indianapolis.
OK, if we can have everybody hold their voice down a little bit, we will go ahead and start. My colleagues will be back in a moment. Because of the time constraint, however, I think we ought to proceed, and then we will get to the question and answers.
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This panel consists of the mayor of Noblesville, the mayor of Greenwood and Mr. Curry, who is a councilman and leader on the council in the city of Indianapolis, and what we wanted to do is find out how they are preparing for the Y2K problem. I want to make sure everybody who wants to hear can hear.
So we will start with the mayor of Noblesville, Mr. Redick.
STATEMENTS OF DENNIS R. REDICK, MAYOR, NOBLESVILLE, IN; CHARLES G. HENDERSON, MAYOR, GREENWOOD, IN; AND CARLTON CURRY, COUNCILMAN, INDIANAPOLIS, IN
Mr. REDICK. Thank you, Chairman Burton.
Mr. BURTON. And could you make sure you pull those microphones as close as possible because some of the people in the back can't hear you.
Mr. REDICK. The following is a brief overview of the city of Noblesville's efforts to become Y2K-compliant. The city's Y2K project has several major goals. One is to maintain or increase our standards for public safety and communications. Second one is to keep the city systems as trouble-free as possible. And the third one is to be completed by the end of summer 1999.
Our project is divided into two parts, and these were started in late 1997. The first part is the systems are committed public safety, specifically the Dispatch Center. The second part is the general systems that are related to all other city projects. The reasons for the division is limited funds and having to prioritize the necessary changes from the most to the least critical.
In our system, the dispatch center and LAN are interconnected to allow for advanced resource management by our personnel. One of the perceived threats to public safety is the loss of power. We have, therefore, placed our dispatch computer and emergency operating centers on generator power filtered through an un-interruptible power supply. With our current fuel capacity, we can operate for 41 days without resupply. All of our portable radios are digital, and they have been reprogrammed to meet the necessary standards, and our in-car computers in the police cars are in the process of being tested for BIOS date and compatibility, and the appropriate operating system release.
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After the upgrade of the dispatching system, we then upgraded the associated application software, And not all of these upgrades are complete. Several of other vendors and/or related agencies are not yet finished. We fear a flood of last-minute upgrades and requirements from other Federal and local agencies that we are connected to, thus making an emergency situation for us to respond to them.
We have experienced some difficulties with the upgrades. For instance, the computer-aided dispatch system is now time-sensitive, and the entire network has to be in a time lock step to prevent emergency alarms from sounding. This is creating the need to install a world clock into our system.
We have also been affected by incompatible programming where related systems that once worked now do not, and the program interfaces have to be rewritten to get back what we lost.
All of our network nodes have been tested and upgraded, and the systems that were not feasible to upgrade have been scheduled and funded for replacement. For our applications software, we must rely on the vendor's published statements, consultant's review, and their final testing.
After we feel that we are finished with all of the necessary upgrades, we will perform a systemwide test. This will occur in midsummer of 1999. We will change the date to just before midnight on December 31st and let the clock run through the end of year and on into the year 2000. We will then have each department test their applications and automated documents, and from this we will develop a list of any further modifications and prioritize them by their urgency.
Our current progress is excellent for those items that we have control over. Our hardware is basically finished, with the exception of some subsystems; software is coming along nicely, and we are actually ahead in some areas. Where we are behind is where we have to wait on outside agencies to make a decision or set a standard that is common to all, like public agencies. Some vendors and manufacturers have been slow to respond. Some have not had patches or fixes available until recently, which has caused unexpected delays or issues. Overall, the city of Noblesville is ready to handle any problems that may arise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. BURTON. We will have some questions for you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Redick follows:]
INSERT OFFSET FOLIOS 87, 112, 88, 113 AND 89 HERE
[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. BURTON. Mr. Mayor. Mayor Henderson.
Mr. HENDERSON. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear here, and I appear here wearing two hats; one as the mayor of the city of Greenwood, but mostly today as the President of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns to inform what cities and towns across the State are doing and we as an association are doing.
As President of Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, I can report that we have been working with the National League of Cities and its technology arm, Public Technology, Inc. They have been offering up advice and tool kits for member cities and towns. IACT held its own technology conference December 9, 1998, in Indianapolis. I am confident as a result of this support, the cities and towns have been supplied with a wealth of information. A national update is available online at www.algov.org. That is National League of Cities' Access Local Government site. At my request, as president of the IACT, the IACT monthly magazine, Action Line, which I have here, the March issue is devoted to information-sharing from various Indiana cities and towns. Most towns feature action plans for the Y2K problem. I will touch on some of these in my remarks.
In Greenwood, in 1997, I asked the city council to fund appropriate moneys for a Technology Department, something we did not have at that time. That took place effective January 1998. The city hired a consultant to assist the Department of Technology with inventory of all city equipment which might possibly be effected by this problem. City officials will determine the proper means to correct any inefficiencies that might be found. Contingency plans were being developed for unexpected problems with city services and from outside agencies and utilities, such as electricity, water, natural gas and telephones.
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Fishers, IN, a small community to our north of about 25- or 30,000 people, began planning early 1997. Manager information services and task force appointed; inventory of all town equipment that took—that could be affected. All items on the inventory list were looked at for upgrade or replacement cost. Vendors were contacted and all upgrades completed. Working with town vendors to determine their ability to provide uninterrupted supplies and services. City of Bloomington, IN. City of Bloomington's Information and Technology Department has been checking all information and technology systems in order of importance, with financial systems checked first; inventoried systems and all departments; created public awareness of the efforts by the city which lead to information-sharing.
Lafayette, IN. Inventoried software, hardware, office equipment, including fax machines, postage meters and diagnostic equipment for vehicles; analyzed which did not meet year 2000 compliance; repaired or replaced those items; ensured that critical business partners would also be Y2K-compliant.
Carmel, IN. Conducted inventory of all systems which it used and those expected to be used in the future. Project manager and steering committee acquired a list of at-risk items and ascertained the cost of upgrading to compliant systems. Committee identified the systems and components whose failure might bring hardship and inconvenience to citizens. This list was prioritized. Upon completion, research, gathering information, the city began the process of replacing and updating those items that were noncompliant; as of December 1998, began testing the Y2K-compliant system.
The cities and towns previously mentioned have all attacked the Y2K problem in basically the same manner. Each formed special committees, hired consultants, inventoried all systems that might be affected by Y2K, prioritized these and began replacement of deficient systems. Each has looked outside the city's offices and to the community, offering assistance and information-sharing to obtain compliance. Utility companies have had a top priority on the list. Cities and towns are attempting to keep services provided to its citizens unaffected by Y2K and inspire confidence in the community they serve.
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Mr. Chairman, that completes my formal remarks.
Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mayor Henderson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Henderson follows:]
INSERT OFFSET FOLIOS 90 TO 92 HERE
[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. BURTON. Councilman Curry.
Mr. CURRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative Horn, ladies and gentlemen. We have had a number of items occur since the last hearing here in Indianapolis, and I would like to extend my personal thanks to some of the things actually you started here that we have overlooked. For example, I would like to extend some appreciation to some of the things going through the Congress that would relate to tort support, so that committees and cities and counties and communities and government agencies who are doing a good will, good faith effort aren't subject too much to certain of our colleagues in the trial lawyer world.
Second, we were able to generate better communication and coordination with the Department of Correction in Indiana, with our county clerk, the justice system, and whatnot, such that certain remediation actions that are being done by all of these groups are now keyed to the same reference dates, where particular programs weren't being redone.
And last, from the area of Chairman Burton, you and Sheriff Cottey, I would like to personally thank you for the assistance you did on some capital funds for an automatic fingerprint identification system and a mug shot program, because I can tell you, we went from leading the pack in Indiana to well behind the pack, couldn't communicate with the State police or the FBI, but with the new system that is coming on line, which we just appropriated money for, we will solve the Y2K issue on that as well as let us be a fair partner.
With respect to works that are going on, I think there are still some areas that we can work with noncontractor discriminates. What I mean by that is, where we are buying services from contractors, it seems to me critically important that where we can, as the government is a procurer of the services, that we should be procuring to a common standard to the degree that is possible. And I would caution from experience when I used to do work in a certain part of the industry, that that standard that we would like help in is the what, not the how. For example, the coding for a fingerprint identification varies among about six or seven suppliers, and so the various programs actually don't talk to each other in terms of developing how that is sensed. And I just used that as a single for instance.
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The status of Indianapolis is that, for a change, on some of the testimony you have heard, we are actually on schedule and under budget. We appropriated $12.9 million new dollars, which supplemented the dollars that were already in our budgets for the various city and county agencies, and the appropriation was in the face of $19-, rising to a $21 million estimate. But through our triage approach and specific assignments with a series of consultants which were selected in key areas, we brought that down to where it appears we will bring it under the $12.9. My personal goal was $10 million.
But in any event, we also had a hearing with the utilities in our committees for two reasons. One, we were concerned as to whether or not we would have electrical power, gas, long- and short-distance communication. We were particularly concerned with public safety. It turns out that we have the 800-megahertz system in that combined communications with the sheriff, police and other law enforcement, fire and providers of medical support. And we are set up with 30 days of fuel supply with no added effort. This is our standard. I suspect we will probably have more than that.
Then from the city/county council standpoint, we are concerned about the attitudes of our citizens, the information that they have been getting. We have been using the local government channel, channel 16, to provide some advice for that. We have also keyed on the 72-hour type of reserve that a citizen or group of citizens should have. We have already done some work along this regard, and we plan in the August/September/October timeframe to do more intensive work in terms of communicating with the people of Marion County and the city of Indianapolis, where they stand with us, what they might expect, and how we might then approach.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I will end, except for one item: I need your vote on May 4th.
Mr. BURTON. You have it. And I am hoping that in a year or so you will reciprocate.
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Mr. HORN. And you are welcome to register in Long Beach, CA.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Curry follows:]
INSERT OFFSET FOLIOS 93 TO 96 HERE
[The official committee record contains additional material here.]
Mr. BURTON. Mayor Redick, you said that you had generators for emergency purposes to make sure that the communications go on with fire and police, and you went to a digital—new digital phone system so you could stay in touch. I just wanted to ask all three of you, in the event that we did have a grid problem, or an electricity problem, or a shutdown in any of the utilities we are talking about, do you have a backup plan in Indianapolis and in Greenwood, as well as Noblesville, to make sure that communications take place and that you have an energy source to be able to make sure that you can send them that information?
We will start with you.
Mr. REDICK. Yes. Our UPS, the uninterruptible power source, we have in place and have always had in place.
Mr. BURTON. That is not only fire, fire, police and ambulance service?
Mr. REDICK. Correct. And we can operate that for a total of 41 days without refueling.
Mr. BURTON. How about in Greenwood?
Mr. HENDERSON. Yeah, we are making sure we have an ample supply of gasoline, because that is what runs the generators. We have major generators in place to run our communication system. We have 11 lift stations that lift our sanitary sewer to our gravity lines. We have generators and standby for those lift station, which don't run continuously, as you know, and petroleum for that. We have also put into place a no-days-off policy for public safety people to have those folks on standby with their vehicles.
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Mr. BURTON. What about the length of time that your gasoline and fuel supplies to run those things—how long a period do you have those for?
Mr. HENDERSON. Well, normally our gasoline supply is usually a month, but on this we think that if everything goes down, it will—we are thinking it will last 2 weeks.
Mr. BURTON. I see. So you do have a supply to keep things running?
Mr. HENDERSON. For 2 weeks. We are hoping that nothing will be more drastic than that. We have to start using it for all the generators and things. It will reduce us to about a 2-week supply.
Mr. CURRY. We have concern over the supply of fuel for vehicles, but as far as the communications, our 800-megahertz system is not only a redundant; that is to say, we have a second facility, which we can under reduced protocol handle all of our public safety requirements for communication in Marion County. It is an uninterruptible supply that immediately goes to battery, while the generators come up and the generators carry on. And we, as our standard course of business, have always 30 days of fuel underground at the site. So, from the communications standpoint, I, frankly, have few worries.
Mr. BURTON. So, if some kind of a breakdown or emergency occurs, how long could you keep everybody in communication with one another and keep things moving?
Mr. CURRY. Communication, we're good for at least a month, and that is with doing nothing else but what we are already doing. With respect to guaranteeing fuel in every police car, ambulance, and fire apparatus, that is something that we are still wrestling with a number.
Mr. BURTON. So, you don't have a date. You don't have a timeframe.
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Mr. CURRY. Today I do not.
Mr. BURTON. But you are working on that.
Mr. CURRY. That is correct.
Mr. BURTON. Do you know what the goal is? Is the goal to have a week's supply?
Mr. CURRY. My goal, my personal goal, would be that a week isn't enough. My personal goal would be 2 weeks.
Mr. BURTON. Two weeks?
Mr. CURRY. And that flies in the face of some other things. And we have some meetings that are scheduled, M