New Mexico in Focus; 301; New Mexico Prepares for Y2K

At the stroke of midnight, the At the stroke of midnight, on December 31, 1999, many computers will think it's 1900 and no one knows for sure what will happen. The real information about how banks, utilities and state agencies are preparing for Y2K, next on Infocus. Good evening and welcome to Infocus. I'm Martin, I'm Martin Luther, Jr., R.C. Chapa. We begin our third season with a topic that has

many people worried, it's called Y2K. Some say that what is known as the Y2K bug could turn a dream U.S. economy into a nightmare at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999. The fear is that computers will interpret the year 2000 as the year 1900 and create an unending spiral of errors with the potential for widespread havoc. Is that a possibility here in New Mexico? Tonight my guests know more about that than just about anybody else in New Mexico. They should. They've been working on the Y2K bug for more than two years. They are Tom Gorman, Regional Emergency Management Coordinator with New Mexico's Department of Public Safety, Julie Gray, spokesperson for PNM, Jim Hall, the State of New Mexico Chief Information Officer, and Joe Christian, Vice President of the New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union. Thank all of you for joining us tonight. Tom, let's start with you. How big of a problem has this been to fix? Well, it's been a big problem for us in emergency management, and that's the area that I

have concentrated in. As a Regional Coordinator, part of my responsibility has been to make sure that the local jurisdictions, the cities and counties around the state are preparing adequately for Y2K. So it's been a very large problem for us. It was hard to get everybody's attention initially, I think. We feel very comfortable right now that we've made a lot of progress. We've only been working at it full-time, let's say, for about the last year. But we've seen a lot of progress, and I feel like the plans that we have in place now should work, and that we should be able to get through this in good shape. Would you say that a lot of your departments have been working on coordination with other the other groups then? Is that kind of the role your folks have been playing? Absolutely. The Office of Emergency Management in normal times when we're not dealing with Y2K, we deal with other types of disasters. This year, very early on, around the first of the year, we put all of our priority into dealing with Y2K. So we communicated that to all of our local jurisdictions, and part of our businesses to oversee the local emergency

management programs around the state. So it was very important that we communicated to them early in the year that this is going to be their top priority, and they needed to work with all the various organizations at the local level to make sure they're addressing it, getting top level attention, and making plans to deal with the problem. And these jurisdictions, are they government agencies, private business, the utility companies, all those, et cetera? Primarily, the area we deal with is the local governments, the emergency management offices and all of the elected officials. So we have interacted to some degree with business and the corporations at the local level, but not to a great extent. One of the things that comes up all the time, it seems like, is the biggest fear when we talk to any of these folks is that power is just not going to be there come to your zeve. So let's talk with Julie. Is this something we're going to have to worry about? Is it going to the clock click to midnight, and instead of fireworks and things going off, everything's just going to shut down?

Well, we're hoping for fireworks, actually. I think we've had a very extensive program underway at PNM for more than two years. We're just recently declared ready by the National or the North American Electric Reliability Council. The North American continent is ready as a matter of fact. What does that mean that we're ready? Well, it means we're ready because we have fully tested all of our systems, and we're talking about from where the coal comes from, all the way to delivering electricity to your home, and also your natural gas supply from the very beginning where it comes out of the ground to where it's delivered to your home. So we've had a very extensive program underway. We are ready, our fellow utilities to whom we're interconnected are also ready. And so we're very confident that any disturbances people see with either the natural gas or electricity are going to be very non-disruptive. So you're not willing to say it's 100% fixed. We're going to have power for sure. On any given day, even the most beautiful day of the year, we can't guarantee, we can

deliver electricity. It's something always happens on our system. We're a little bit vulnerable because of weather primarily. People who drive into utility poles cause a problem sometimes. And that's a bigger problem on New Year's Eve than any other nights. Maybe a problem. We may have a weather event somewhere in the west that could impact our system as well. And so we never can say 100% on any given day. But we think there's a likelihood that the most likely scenario people may experience is some voltage fluctuations that really won't impact residential customers as much as they might be larger manufacturing facilities or other facilities who are sensitive to power fluctuations. Probably more likely for people might be an outage from one to three hours, which is what you might experience on any given outage due to weather. It's kind of a normal when power goes out that's kind of a normal, unless it's just a flash. It's kind of a normal element. As we can restore it more quickly and we strive for less than an hour at this point and try to meet that goal. But sometimes it's longer depending on the problems that we encounter out there in the field. An outage as long as 24 hours is probably less likely than that

at this point. We don't really foresee that being a very likely scenario that people have to face. But we do say, be ready just in case because preparation is always key for anyone during any type of weather-related event. Well, I'm just going to say it seems like that would be just good advice for any time of the year. We'll come back and talk a little bit more about what those preparations might look like. Jim Hall, chief information officer for the state of New Mexico, what you guys have been in the news. We're actually in fiscal year 2000 for you folks. I'd like to point out that the year 2008, the date, turns out there's a whole series of dates. For example, Canada rolled over to their fiscal year 2000, April 1st, and no one noticed. In state government, we rolled over to our fiscal year 2000, fiscal year 00, if you will, on July 1st. And as far as I can tell, no one noticed. I mean, we still did the work of the state. So there's a number of, in the next big year 2008 is today,

because this is a day in which the federal government rolls over to its fiscal year 2000. So far, I haven't heard of anyone noticing. So far, looks to me like the federal government is still operating. Okay, the FAA is still working. I mean, it looks to me like there's no, I haven't heard on the news reports on the way down here, that there was any great disaster in the federal government. So in point of fact, we're going through a series of dates. For example, there'll be dates after January 1st. We have a number of things that are monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, et cetera. And all of those will hit their first dates, their first 00 date, on the appropriate time. So I guess I'd like to point out that it's not something that only happens on that day. In fact, it's a whole series of things. And so far, the work we've been doing seems to have worked out pretty well. Has there been a lot of additional work that's had to go on? And I guess you feel confident

that this is going to, that everything's going to continue to move along as smooth as it has been? Well, two things. First of all, there's been lots of work. And secondly, it hasn't all been smooth. You know, this is fairly, we're doing a lot of work by a lot of people. And for me to sit here and say, well, it's just been wonderful. There's been no problems. And it's just going to continue to be, what you know, is obviously patently false. Well, maybe from my side, it's looked very smooth, but from the inside, it's, as well. Inside we've been working at it very hard. We've had lots of people putting in lots of overtime. We've had to deal with people who leave for higher paying jobs. We've had to deal with schedules at slip and contractors that have done bankrupt and et cetera, et cetera, all the normal stuff. I do want to make sure that people understand that this is not a very complex problem. It's taking a two-digit date and making it a four-digit date. So this is a problem that's an inch deep, but about 10 miles wide. Okay, there's just lots of it. It's not a really complex, deep problem. Do you think most people are actually fixing the problem by making it a four-digit

date versus putting something in the program that just kind of gives the computer artificial intelligence, like all of us know, we see a zero-zero, we're going to assume it's 2000. Obviously, a computer can't do that. Are there some people trying to make the computers just interpret zero-zero as the year 2000? Or are we going back and fixing the problem by changing it to four-digit year? I don't want to get too technical here, but actually people are fixing it several different ways. The most common way is to simply make a four-digit field out of a two-digit field. That fixes the problem until the year 10,000 anyway. To 10,000, and maybe I am going to be... I don't think so. I don't think I'm going to... I'll leave that on to my great-great-drank children, etc. But the other way is that some things, because people sometimes take and say, if it's zero-zero, then assume it's 2000, do the math this way. But in general, people are moving from a two-digit day to a four-digit day. Joe Christian from the New Mexico Federal Credit Union. How are the banks, credit unions,

financial institutions doing? Are we all going to still have our money? I'm certain we'll still have our money. The federal government has inspired all the financial institutions in the nation to be compliant. We've been aware of this problem since 1996, and we've been working very hard on it also. We've had, for the most part, most... Today, I think we have like 99% compliance of any financial institution in the nation today. I just saw quote the other day from Alan Greenspan that he expects that everyone will be complete by the end of November. At Mexico Educator's Federal Credit Union, we've been compliant since the end of last year, and that's rather typical with most financial institutions. So this means I don't have to go the week before, last week at December, pull out my money out, stuff it under a mattress? Well, you bring up a good point, and I actually brought up a prop with me today. I borrowed my daughter, Carolyn's videotape of the Lion King, and I'd

like to try to explain how your data is stored on a computer. It's been very helpful, because some people believe their money is just going to disappear. If you have a VCR at home and you don't know how to set the date, perhaps it's flashing 12.00 right now. Perhaps it may not be Y2K compliant, and maybe it won't register that it's January 1st of year 2000 when the year rolls over. This is how we store our data, and I'm sure the state does the same thing. Here's a backup tape of the data at Mexico Educator's Federal Credit Union. So all my money's on there. All your money's on here. Well, actually, this is a copy of our hard drive. And no matter what the data is on the computer, I can still read this data. Nothing is going to disappear. This isn't a bug or a virus. It's simply an issue where we had to adjust our programming, so our system would recognize that it was a year 2000. The same type of thing. Jim was just talking about it changing from two digits to four digits. Exactly. And it's been done. And I think the big issue is whether we'll have power or not. And most financial institutions have power back up as we do. And we'll be doing

our end of your processing on a generator. And we'll be watching to see how things go. And I have great confidence in PNM that this will probably be a big non-event. But we're doing a number of things just in terms of contingency planning just in case. Like what? We will disconnect from the power grid and run all our processing offline from a backup generator. That's probably the big significant issue. Exactly. And I expect that we're going to experience something like a bad winter storm. And because we have a backup generator, we'll be fine. And when things get squared away a few hours later, if there is a problem, we'll be up and running and everything will be fine. What happens, though, if people don't watch in focus here, don't know to leave their money in the bank and they start taking it out. And lots of people start doing this. What happens then? Almost like a run on a bank, I guess, is the way I would look at it. Exactly. And I think the big issue there is I think you're putting yourself and your family at risk if you would go and withdraw all your funds from a financial institution that is the federal

government has ensured all the deposits. It doesn't make sense to panic in any sense. The federal government has mandated that we be prepared for additional volume of cash withdrawals, which is pretty typical around a holiday anyway. So every federal credit union and bank in the country is expecting a bit more volume than normal. And I think again, it'll be a none of that. Is your organization looked into this panic thing, ways to maybe control it if it were to start, head it off before it does start? Is that something you guys have worked on? It is one of the issues that we deal with, and we hear that a lot in the forums that we do around the state. There have been a lot of Y2K forums, and we are concerned about that. But again, I think maybe the best way to counter that is to get factual information out. We were talking about that a little earlier. If we can get the information to the public, and again,

not all of them show up at our forums, but it's very important. I think we're going to try to get more public service announcements out to the local public and ensure that they understand this problem, first of all, and then understand what we're doing to counter it. And the fact is, you know, all of the federal institutions have reported that they are a complainer will be, the state institutions, the same way, the state agencies, and local governments working on it very hard. So again, we feel comfortable, those of us that have been working on this problem for some time feel comfortable, that we're solving it and we'll be ready on December 31st. And now, the difficulty, of course, is communicating that to the public and making sure that we can dispel any rumors and not get the public to pen. Well, I was just thinking that we've been around the table here now. We've heard that everybody believes they're ready, but the unknown in this becomes John Q. Public. And so what advice do we give them? What should they be doing from your standpoint to

handle anything that might come up, yet not go so far the other way as to cause a panic that we were just talking about? Well, one of the approaches that we use, and it's being used pretty much nationwide, is to deal with why two came much like a winter storm. So we are still promoting public and individual preparedness among the citizens of the state. And part of that is having some amount of food on hand, have water on hand, to get through a period of three to five days, basically. And that's the same information that we would usually give to people regarding preparation for a winter storm. So we don't feel like we have to go much beyond that. The people that are doing things as far as generators, that kind of thing, that's not something we're recommending. We don't feel that's necessary. Julie, does PNM buy into the same thing? Just to be prepared for any winter storm, is that kind of the same thinking? I think we're exactly in the same place on that. I think the guidelines we offer are the same. Make sure you have fresh fresh batteries so you can

listen to the radio so you can get an update from PNM about what's going on with your power supply if there is a problem. But really, I think that's those are very prudent steps. And of course, we urge people if there's something other preparations they want to take, that's entirely up to them. But I think taking a prudent approach like that, which very sensible works for us as well. Kind of just have the provisions. As Tom said, food, you're talking about batteries. Jim, what about people with their home computers? What, there's something they should maybe be doing? Oh, I think that the only thing that they really need to do is probably because of the concern that we may have some power fluctuations, would be like a lightning storm. You probably want to turn your machine off. But other than that, they should also want to check to be sure their home computer is Y2K compliant. There's a number of sites on the websites, I mean, on the internet, and log into and see if your computer is Y2K compliant. Beyond that, I don't think that they need to do anything about their home computer.

Well, what if they did one of these checks and found out that their machine isn't Y2K? Is that going to cause them a big problem? Joe has told us they're not really going to lose any data, but probably the most serious thing they'll have to do. So when they turn their machine on every time, they'll come up with the wrong date, they go into the date function, reset the date to be, you know, January 24th to your 2000, whatever. And from that point on, the machine will work fine. And that's probably, there are some older computers that might have a more serious problem, but they log in and usually the internet sites will tell them what to do. At worst, the person might have to replace their home computer because it won't maintain the right date. Beyond that, but that would be for people who really do have older machines and older software. They ought to check with one of the retailers or something to be sure they're going to be all right. But what you're saying really is it would be any rotation because they'd have to manually enter the date that, again, they're not going to lose any data. If it's really important when you turn your machine on and see the current date, then you may want to

upgrade your hardware. But for most people, it won't matter. And the other thing is, you know, you normally should back up your data on your home computer anyway. I mean, this is just normal, good sense, like you should have candles. I'm not gentle. Flashlights are some sorts of light. You should have an extra food. And I think what we're encouraging people to do is what's normally good sense. So maybe this whole idea of instead of panicking because of the calendar rolling over, it's a great opportunity for people just to get their entire preparedness life in order. That's what I'm hearing, I think, from all of you, is that? You're right. That's true. That's true. And the reason that it's a little more difficult in this situation is this is the first time we've gone through a Y2K. It's very different. It's the only time, too, right? Well, that's only the one thing. So, you know, we're learning some new things. And at the state level, we have a state emergency operations plan that deals with all hazards. And we've had to make some amendments to that because of Y2K, you know, it's a little different situation. So we have to incorporate some of those

unique aspects of Y2K. Give me an example of one. Well, one that kind of makes a difference in my life is when we deal with other types of disasters like floods, we normally are dealing in responding to something that's happening happening in a local jurisdiction. We normally expect the state to have their full capability to deal with a flood, and the resources that the state has like the National Guard and the State Police are available. In this case, we have to look at the situation that they may be experiencing problems themselves. So it's been learning experience for me to deal a lot more with state agencies to see that they are, in fact, capable of performing their mission because if we do have any winter storm activity going on or problems related to Y2K somewhere out in the state at a local level, we would certainly like to have the state agencies able to respond as they would do other disasters. And that's a question, Mark, you know, whether or not they'll have full capability. They may be experiencing the same kinds of problems that are going on at local

level. And are we planning on having, or do you know, are we planning on having more law enforcement people out? I mean, that's kind of another piece here, just because, and I don't want to get into the year 2000, start the Millennium, or it was 2001 started, but there's probably just going to be a lot more people out in a year's eve, and how are we going to deal with that? Most local law enforcement agencies, as well as the state police in our department, have pretty much curtailed leave for that period, in fact, for the period before and a little bit after the first of the year. I think they recognized early on that they were going to be overburdened during that period, just from the social activities. But then when we look at the possibility of some interruptions based on Y2K, and possibly winter storm activity, those are all things that task law enforcement agencies anyway. So they have a pretty full play if all of those things come into play at the end of the year. And most of them started very early on and told their people, we need to be fully manned, we're not going to allow you to take leave and things like that.

You know, this whole Y2K thing has really been in the media. You can't pick up a newspaper, or turn on to a TV station, or something, and not hear people talking about it, and talking about all these types of things. Is there something, and I'd like to just kind of get a quick comment from each of you about what role do you think the media, the general media should play, and getting the information out that we've talked about tonight, preventing that panic level, and just getting people prepared for this to happen. Julie, let's start with you. I think the media has a really critical role, and I think most of the media that I work with regular bases take that very seriously. Programs like this do a tremendous amount of good. I think just so that people who really out there in the real world are dealing with so many other things, and aren't facing these issues until one day, they think, I better find out what's going on. So, they're not always tuned into this issue the way we may be in our jobs, but I think the media has a very strong role, and I think for the most part, the media has played

a very responsible role in getting the good information out, the accurate information out, to the public. Jim? I'd like to just like to say there, I think that the media, I'd agree with you. I think the media has been very responsible in reporting now in reacting. I'd like to see the media perhaps start to focus in on what I would call Y2K Stams, Y2K Rumors. Okay, we had a deal in Santa Fe the other day where half-page ad in the paper get ready for Y2K, the end of the world as we know it, come to the Hilton Hotel into this conference room and hear about what's really going to happen. Well, one of my staff went over, and the person running the seminar was selling dried food, and it was pretty bad dried food, okay, it was pretty, unfortunately, and makes me think that they weren't really too wise, they let people taste it before they sold it to them, but it was pretty grim, but I think that this sort of thing where, and we've had instances where people,

there was a ringing in Michigan, calling people and say, give us your bank account number and your social security number, we're doing a Y2K test. So this falls right back on to things we've talked about this entire program, be prepared as you would for anything else, watch out, just as you would not give out those numbers, at any other time of the year, don't fall for it this time either. And expect more scans, okay, I mean there are people who will try to make ill-gotten gains off of this, because everyone's talking about it, and it's, yeah, you got it. Joe, a final comment from you on how the media has been handling this, or should be handling it? I like Jim's point, it seems that the whole Y2K issue has become like a cottage industry, and a lot of people have made money on it to this point. I've seen a lot of things in the media where they're being very responsible, they're trying to explain how computers work, they're trying to explain technology at a level where, three years ago, no one would care, and there were

things that everyone took for granted. I think the media needs to continue what they're doing, and focus on the truth and information, and the public will be aware of what's going on, and their minds will be at ease. Unfortunately, we're out of time already, thank you off for joining us tonight. I guess the bottom line is, be prepared just like you would be for any other winter storm or anything else that comes along. Thanks again for all of you for joining us. That is our report for this evening. Next week, join RC Chapa for a discussion on Indian gaming with some of New Mexico's Pueblo Governors. We'll hear what they have to say about the revenue sharing agreement they have with the state. Until then, from all of us at K&METV, I'm Art Lloyd Jr. Thank you for joining us. Have a great night.