A new General Accounting Office (GA0) report concluding that theelectric utilities are lagging behind on Y2K readiness came underfire in industry circles for being based on data that was sixmonths old. The GAO report, which was released last Friday,followed a Senate study of the issue that industry critics contendalso was founded on out-dated, faulty information.

“First the Senate (at the end of February) and now the GAO havegotten lazy. They’re using old information. It’s completelyirresponsible. They should have gone directly to NERC (the NorthAmerican Electricity Reliability Council) to find out what is goingto be published in the next NERC report, which shows that theindustry is more than 75% tested, inspected and ready to go” withits computers to ensure a smooth transition to Jan. 1, 2000, saidJohn Castagna, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute (EEI)in Washington.

The next NERC report is due out in a few weeks, and will revealthat the majority of the utility industry’s “critical systems thatare important to providing electric services have been inventoried,tested and fixed where needed,” he noted, adding that the industryhas committed itself to being 100% Y2K ready by the end of June.

The GAO report was culled from information in a NERC survey thatwas released last November, which found that only 44% of electricutilities at that time had completed testing and fixing of theircomputers. Based on the six-month-old data, the GAO – the watchdogarm of Congress – concluded in its review that electric utilitiesface “significant risks” in achieving Y2K readiness by the end ofthe year. Castagna criticized the GAO for making little or noeffort to obtain information on the progress of the utilityindustry’s Y2K readiness efforts since last November.

This was “even worse” than the Senate report on the Y2Kpreparedness of the electric utility industry, which based itsdistressing conclusions on information dating back to December, hetold NGI.

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