Below is an excerpt from Bonnie Camp's NERC analysis, which Critt Jarvis referred to a few posts back. The whole thing can be found at:

http://www.cbn.org/y2k/insights.asp?file=990114o.htm

You probably should go to the link, because it includes more info & a table (which couldn't be reproduced here). It is a deeper examination by Bonnie Camp of NERC's own remediation statistics on a plant by plant basis, rather than an average for the whole industry.

DP/CBN News ------------------- Here is the excerpt:

Seventeen percent of the utilities which responded to the NERC November survey estimate they have completed 10% or less of their fixing and testing of critical systems. 16 utilities have not done any remediation or testing yet. Are they at the starting line or still trying to get to the field? Just 34%, or one-third of the utilities have completed more than 50% of critical systems remediation and testing. Two thirds (66%) have completed 50% or less of their remediation for critical systems.

-- Drew Parkhill (y2k@cbn.org), January 15, 1999

Answers

Spin, Paul?

-- Mo (transparent@motive.com), January 15, 1999.

"Seventeen percent of the utilities which responded to the NERC November survey estimate they have completed 10% or less of their fixing and testing of critical systems. 16 utilities have not done any remediation or testing yet. Are they at the starting line or still trying to get to the field? Just 34%, or one-third of the utilities have completed more than 50% of critical systems remediation and testing. Two thirds (66%) have completed 50% or less of their remediation for critical systems."

Do you want to know the REAL picture? It is actually MUCH worse than this.

Let's say that a utility claims it has 405 of its systems remediated. So what? Does this tell us what is REALLY meanigful about those 405 that are remediated? No. The REAL issue is how much of what IS remediated IS remediated BECAUSE you worked on it. Suppose that half of those systems had required little or no work. The actuall picture is that all of the money spent can NOT be extrapolated over ALL of those systems. many times people see that they have done 40% and merely THINK that means that they ACTUALLY remediated 40%. NO TRUE.

So if they had 200 mission critical systems and had remediated 40% of them or 80, they have not spent "x" amount of dollars on 80 systems, maybe only 40. So they have 120 more systems to go and they have only ACTUALLY remediated 40, so the correct extrapolation is that they have THREE times as much work to go and money to spend than they have already done. Inless than half of the time allotted in total ad that does not even include testing .

Now, this would NOT be important if the overall amount that they HAD actually remediated was up around 80% or 90%, because at that point it makes no difference how much of the remediated systems they actually worked on . They only have a little more to go.

The ISSUE is that with as little as they have done, they do not have as much to do as they have already done, but actually more like two to three times what they have ACTUALLY remediated. And, They are underbudgetted by fifty percent. They have to DOUBLE or triple their remaining budget.

Get it yet?

They aren't going to make it.

-- Paul Milne (fedinfo@halifax.com), January 15, 1999.