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Y2K
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 02:06:49 -0800 (PST)
From: blazing@igc.apc.org
To: ENVIRONMENT TECHNOLOGY and SOCIETY <envtecsoc@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Press Conference on Thursday, February 25
The following is a press release and may be distributed. --Claire Gilbert
Return-Path: <pgordon@erols.com>
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Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 01:46:46 -0500
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: "P. Gordon" <pgordon@erols.com>
Subject: Corrected date: Press Conference on Thursday, February 25
PRESS CONFERENCE:
Release of a Working White Paper on Y2K:
"A Call to Action: National and Global Implications of
the Year 2000 and Embedded Systems Crisis"
by Paula D. Gordon, Ph.D.
George Washington University Marvin Center
Room 411
800 21st Street
Washington, DC
Thursday, February 25, 1999
10 AM to Noon
Dr. Paula D. Gordon has authored a Working White Paper on Y2K entitled
"A Call to Action: National and Global Implications of the Year 2000
and Embedded Systems Crisis". This paper has been prepared as a
challenge to those in positions of public responsibility to rethink
and redefine the approach they are taking to the threats and
challenges posed by the Year 2000 and embedded systems crisis and take
decisive actions that will minimize the harmful impacts of Y2K to the
extent possible.
Dr. Gordon has gained recognition during the past year for her work on
the Y2K and the embedded systems crisis. She has been a frequent
panelist and speaker on Y2K. Her writing on embedded systems has been
featured on the Year 2000 (Peter DeJager) website
(http://www.year2000.com) and on the GSA Global Conferencing Website
(http://www.itpolicy.gsa.gov) and now can also be found at her own
website: http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k/keypeople/gordon. She was an invited
Y2K expert at a Global Y2K Scenario Exercise held by the Naval War
College in January of 1999 and will conduct a workshop at a Conference
on Year 2000 Contingency Planning and Preparedness for Government for
the International Quality and Productivity Center on March 18th in
Arlington. She has been involved in organizing and participating in a
series of evening panel programs on Y2K sponsored by the GW Y2K Group
and hosted by The Washington Post Company. The December 15 program was
featured on C-SPAN.
The release date and time of her Working White Paper on Y2K: "A Call
to Action: National and Global Implications of the Year 2000 and
Embedded Systems Crisis". will be February 25 at 10 AM in Room 411 of
George Washington University's Marvin Center (800 21st St. NW,
Washington, DC). All three parts of the White Paper are to be posted
beginning February 25, 1999 at
http://www.gwu.edu/~y2k/keypeople/gordon.
All members of the media and other interested individuals are welcome
to attend.
The central message in Dr. Gordon's White Paper concerns the serious
threats posed by embedded systems. According to the Gartner Group
estimates there are a minimum of 20 million embedded systems that are
going to malfunction if remedial or other steps are not taken. Dr.
Gordon asserts that there is neither the time, nor the manpower and
resources to identify all of those embedded systems likely to
malfunction and replace them or make sure that they do not
malfunction.
In defining "embedded systems", Dr. Gordon uses the definition taken
from the United Kingdom's Action 2000 website:
www.open.gov.uk/bg2000/whattodo/embsys2.html:
"Embedded systems contain 'programmed instructions running via
processor chips....They perform control, protection, and monitoring
tasks....In broad terms embedded systems are programmable devices or
systems which are generally used to control or monitor things like
processes,machinery, environments, equipment, and communications."
She believes that we are at a point where we can only take actions to
minimize the harm that will be caused. She believes that the full
implications of this central message have not sunk in. Posing the
highest risks are such things as weapons systems, nuclear power
plants, chemical plants, hazardous materials sites and facilities,
refineries, oil and gas pipelines, tankers, and dams.
A purpose in writing this White Paper, is to bring this message home
to persons in roles of responsibility at every level of government.
Governments have not taken action fast enough to minimize to the
extent possible the harmful impacts that can be expected. In fact they
have been painfully slow in even becoming aware of the nature and
scope of the problem.
The White Paper is intended to assist public officials, including
those at the highest levels of government, in getting a better sense
of the magnitude and seriousness of the problem. It is also intended
to assist the media and the public in understanding the nature of the
Year 2000 technology crisis and to help them understand why more has
not been done to date and what more needs to be done.
Dr. Gordon calls upon those in positions of responsibility nationally,
as well as globally, to treat Y2K as the crisis that it is. She
contends that we are not doing everything that needs to be done and we
have not even dedicated nearly enough resources to the tasks that we
have undertaken. She stresses that in the time remaining, we lack
the manpower with the needed expertise to do all that needs to be done
and that we must nonetheless decide now to allocate billions of
dollars worth of additional resources to ensure that everything that
can be done will be done to minimize impacts.
Dr. Gordon's perspective could not be in sharper contrast to the
perspective that can be found in the January 7th Report released by
the President's Council. According to that report "The Y2K problem is
solvable". According to Dr. Gordon, it is not. She believes that all
that we can do now is to work as smartly and rapidly as we can to
minimize the damaging impacts on all fronts. The emphasis of the
President's Council has been on information gathering, monitoring,
assessing progress, and coordinating communication and activity ~
approaches which are neither crisis-oriented nor adequately designed
to minimize to the extent possible the harm that can be expected, such
as:
~ the failure of chemical plants (80% of the American public live
within close proximity to a chemical plant),
~ the failure of nuclear power plants,
~ the failure of pipelines and refineries,
~ the failure of hazardous material sites, etc., etc.
Dr. Gordon states that those at the forefront of national and global
efforts seem to be basing their efforts on a partially definition of
the problem. Consequently they fail to grasp the seriousness of the
problem. The commonsense, leadership, vision, and sense of
commitment to addressing the problem seems also to be lacking, along
with an absence of a sense of obligation to commit all necessary
resources and act.
Dr. Gordon includes in her White Paper a section defining the nature
of Y2K threats and challenges and the likely severity of their
impacts. She urges that the government immediately establish a
crisis-oriented Special Action Office for Y2K at least equal in size
to the Federal Energy Office in the early '70s. She describes the
mission and functions of that Special Action Office. One of the
central functions of the Special Action Office for Y2K will be to
minimize the harm that can be expected as a result of the
malfunctioning of non-Y2K compliant date sensitive embedded systems.
This, she believes, is a matter of gravest urgency that is not at all
well understood and that is consequently receiving a fraction of the
attention it deserves nationally as well as globally.
A wide range of other initiatives are set forth in the White Paper.
Dr. Gordon hold the titles of Visiting Research Professor and Director
of Special Projects with George Washington University's Research
Program in Social and Organizational Learning (RPSOL). She also
serves as an Adjunct Professor of Management Science in GW's School of
Business and Public Management and teaches courses from time to time
at the Northern Virginia Center of the University of Virginia and the
Johns Hopkins School of Continuing Studies.
She has served in a wide range of roles in the Federal government and
in the private sector. She founded and served as president of a
non-profit organization for five years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
During her years in Washington, she has served as a consultant and
contractor, staff officer, troubleshooter, policy analyst, comparative
scenario analyst, and director of special projects. She was a staff
officer and troubleshooter at the Federal Energy Office during the
energy crisis of 1974 and played an instrumental role in bringing
about an early resolution of the Independent Truckers' Strike. While
at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, she developed issue and
options papers in a wide range of issues areas relating to
reorientation of national civil preparedness and nuclear attack
preparedness planning. She has also drafted subsequent works on
emergency medical preparedness and on the societal aspects of disaster
recovery in the aftermath of declared disasters. At the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, she carried out public liaison and
policy analyst roles in variety of issue areas relating to the
environment, environmental health, and agency Superfund
responsibilities.
Other affiliations have included the National Institute of Mental
Health, the Research Applied to National Needs Program of the National
Science Foundation, and the U.S. Advisory Commission on
Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR). While with ACIR, she served as
Director of Special Projects and oversaw a study on Federal and State
mandates and academic effectiveness in education.
She ran for Congress in the San Francisco Bay Area receiving key
support at the local, state, and national levels.
Dr. Gordon's advanced degrees are in Public Administration from the
University of California at Berkeley and The American University.
Areas of emphasis in her graduate programs were leadership theory,
governmental management, organizational theory and development, and
political philosophy. Her dissertation, Public Administration in the
Public Interest, described an approach to public administration that
includes an emphasis on complex societal problemsolving.
******
--
BLAZING TATTLES Newsletter: "Your work is incredible and your
Y2K coverage is staggering." --Lee Gerstad
"We love what you are accomplishing." --Helen Stewart, Ph.D.
". . . a jewel." --George Pumphrey
<blazing@igc.apc.org> <http://www.concentric.net/~blazingt>