'Openness' to counter Y2K doomsday sayers

With memories of Auckland's power failure debacle still fresh, the deputy mayor tells Chris Barton people need information to deal with the millennium bug.

The Deputy Mayor of Auckland, Dr Bruce Hucker, believes the public have a right to know more about how well prepared their local bodies are to deal with the millennium bug.

And in the interests of open government, he has organised a forum on Y2K issues, to be held in May.

But unlike the Local Government New Zealand Y2K Summit in the capital on March 31, the Auckland meeting will be open to both the public and the media.

Dr Hucker is concerned that the Wellington forum, which will feature an address by the Prime Minister to representatives of all local bodies in the country, is to be a closed session.

"The Y2K Summit should be open. The public is an essential ingredient to Y2K in terms of what might happen. They need be able to assess information about what authorities are doing so they can make intelligent decisions."

Dr Hucker's concerns stem from Auckland's first-hand experience of the "fragility of urban systems" as seen in last year's CBD power failure and the ripple effects when an essential service goes down.

There is also advice from overseas, such as the report from the UK millennium bug taskforce telling every household to hoard two weeks' emergency food rations.

"There are apocalyptic strands associated with the millennium and people are responding to the millennium bug with apocalyptic thinking."

Dr Hucker said that getting information about regional Y2K preparedness and contingency plans into a public forum would enable people to make intelligent choices rather than just respond to a doomsday scenario.

Like the Local Government NZ summit, the Auckland regional forum intends to have a range of participants representing banking, telecommunications, electricity, water, sewerage infrastructure, air and land transport, hospital, police, fire and other emergency services.

As well as informing the public, organisers hope that essential service providers will give details about their planning and identify areas where more needs to be taken.

Dr Hucker said that while he had been able to establish the state of Y2K readiness of the city council's responsibilities, matters were not so clear where one part of the infrastructure passed to another organisation's control.

An example was the council's Metrowater company, which depends on Watercare Services for the bulk supply of water and removal of sewage.

Dr Hucker is waiting on a report from Watercare Services on the extent of the Y2K problem for the region.

The information services manager for the city council, Doug Elder, said Auckland was fortunate that many of its computer systems had been updated with local body amalgamation in 1990.

It had also kept its software up to date through a programme of "version evolution and life cycle management."

Testing of the largely IBM AS400-based administration systems and Novell wide area network, connecting 1200 desktops, was now complete - with only minor date formatting problems found on a few internal reports.

Mr Elder estimated the council had spent about $250,000 fixing Y2K problems. He said Metrowater had checked all embedded systems in pumping stations and found only about $10,000 needed to be spent.

The situation looked more drastic when it came to the city's traffic control systems. At first it seemed that all traffic-light controllers would have to be replaced, at a cost of $1.2 million.

The council had since been assured by the manufacturer that the controllers were Y2K-compliant but was testing to make sure. Its centralised control room system had been tested and was compliant.

Mr Elder said the council was now working on continuity planning, which should be complete by June. He said Auckland's CBD power crisis had "taught a few lessons."

The council's administration building was already wired to take a generator and the council would probably buy its own generators this year.