**IRM Forum - Y2K**

A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center

November 18, 1999

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network presents live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, the IRM
Forum: An Interactive Telecast on the Goals and Objectives of IRM 2000
Activities. And Now, the Host of Your Program, Robin Stoebe.

Stoebe: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to the 2000 Edition of The IRM
Forum. In Today\'s First Segment We Will Be Discussing Some Changes BLM
Will See in Our Information Resources Management Program and In the
Second Half of Our Show We Will Be Providing an Update On BLM\'s Year
2000 Compliance Efforts. To Provide with Us an Overview Of BLM\'s IRM
Program I Am Joined This Morning by Hord Tipton, Bureau\'s Assistant
Director for Information Rear Sources Management.

Tipton: Good Morning, Robin. How Do Youing?

Stoebe: Good. Also with Us Is the IRM Branch Chief from Arizona, Welcome
to The Program, Chris.

North: Glad to Be Here and Bring a State and Field Perspective to the
Conversation.

Stoebe: Nice to Be Joined by One of My Peers. Before We Get Started, I
Would Like to Remind the Viewers We Encourage to You Join in and Be Part
of the Discussion. Here\'s the Ground Rules. Any Time During Today\'s
Show, If You Have a Question or Comment For Us, Just Give Us a Call or
Send Us a Fax Using the Numbers Provide to Do Your Offices. We\'ll Get
to Your Questions as Quickly as We Can. We\'ve Also Reserved Some Time
Near the Time of ‑‑ near the End Of Each Segment for a General
Question‑and‑answer Segment. To Get Us Started this Morning, BLM
Director Tom Fry Has Prepared Some Remarks for Us.

Dir. Fry: Good Day. You Know, in the Aftermath of Our Almrs Experience,
We Face Many Challenges Within the Bureau Know Terms of How Are We Going
to Deal with Our Information Technology. The Almrs Experience Taught Us
a Number of Things. It Taught Us We\'ve Got to Involve Our Users, Every
Day, in The Process of Developing Our I.t. Program. It Also Taught Us
That as We Look at Our Business Systems and How We Do Our Business Every
Day, it Needs to Be Driven by Those Business Needs and Not Necessarily
by the Needs of the Information Technology Program. So the Opportunity
for Us Now as We Look in the Post Almrs Environment Is to Decide How
We\'re Going to Be Stab Ourselves, How We Are ‑‑ Establish Ourselves,
How We Are Going to Do Our Business and So This Broadcast Will Help Do
You Say That. Hord Tipton Is Going to Spend Some Time with You Today
Talking About How Best for Us to Organize Ourselves, How Best for Us to
Use Information Technology, as We Move into the 21st Century. I Think
this Is One of the Great Opportunities of the Bureau and I Encourage You
to Participate With Hord in this Exercise. Thanks a Lot.

Stoebe: We Appreciate the Director Taking Time to Talk to Us about the
New Direction of IRM. Tip, I Believe You Have Some Additional Thoughts
How We Could Best Focus Our IRM Efforts as Well as Investments in New
Technology.

Tipton: Robin, I Sure Do. Thank You. Chris, I\'m Glad You Were Able to
Join Us Today. Nice Tie. Nice Tie.

North: Thank You.

Tipton: in Setting into My New Job as Assistant Director of Information
Resources Management And the Chief Information Officer, I Have Been Very
Intrigued by a Lot of the Comments I\'ve Gotten about How Difficult the
Job Is. In Thinking about That, I\'ve Done a Little Reading, and
Mysteriously Enough in My Inbox One Day There Was a Copy of an Article
from \"Information Week\" Called \"How to Survive as a Cio.\" I Found
That Very Interesting, Since the Life‑span of a Cio Generally Is about
18 Months, Something like That, of a Director, I Thought it Would Be
Worthwhile in More or less Talking about a Few Points That Come from
That and I Think Probably Could Relate Very Well To What Happens out on
the IRM Professionals in the Field. It Is a Very Difficult Job from Top
to Bottom and I\'d like to Start off Today Just by Maybe Talking a
Moment or Two about Those, Robin. The First Point That Is Made Clear in
a Lot of the Literature Is That Your Informationation Resource Programs
Have to Have The Support of Top Management, And I Was Particularly
Gratified This Morning from the Remarks of Our Director That Sort of
Underlined What He Expected Fromness this Program. He and I Have Had
Several Conversations about His Expectations and the Department\'s
Expectations Coming Into My New Job, and We\'re Going To Talk about a
Lot of Those Important Things Today. We\'ve Also Had Numerous
Discussions with Congress and Omb and Other Parts ‑‑ All Who Have Been
Watching Us and Assistingness Our Efforts to Improve and Make Progress
in IRM Over the Years. But, to Me, That Support Has to Also Come from
Folks like Yourself, and Folks down on the Ground. If They Really Don\'t
Support Us And Our Ideals and Our Policies From IRM, They Just Simply
Are Not Going to Work. So at this Point, I\'m Very Encouraged, and the
‑‑ in the Honeymoon of My New Job, If You Will, about the Excitement and
Enthusiasms of People Across the Board and Helping Us Make Some Good
Improvements. A Second Point That\'s Brought Out That Leads to Success
of IRM Organizations Is Understanding The Importance of the Business
Principles. We Heard Director Fry Point out That Business Principles Are
What Have to Drive Our Actions And Not the Program from Benefiting of
Information Technology Program per Se. So We Have to Take the Time to
Understand What the Business Need Is and Work it from That Point. A
Third Point Is Recognizing the Importance of Sound Project Management.
Now, this Is Not to Say That We Haven\'t Had Good Diligent Efforts on
Project Managements In the Past. It Simply Means That There Are New
Techniques for Managing Projects, and We Just Have to Pay More Attention
to That, Make Sure That the People We Have Managing Those Projects Are
Properly Trained, Have the Skills and the Backgrounds to Make the Right
Things Happen. A Third Point Is ‑‑ I\'m Sorry, a Fourth Point Is Being
Able to Network Across Our Program Boundaries. It\'s Not Enough Just to
Be an Expert in IRM. We Have to Know What Is Happening out in the
Business Side of It. This Is the One Thing That I Feel Good about My New
Role in The Job Is, since I Have Been in BLM, I\'ve Had Six Different
Job Titles in Seven Years. So I\'ve Grown Accustomed to the Change and
I\'ve Also Had the Rare Opportunity to Participate In the Programs from
the Policy Side, Had the Opportunity to Implement a Lot of Our Programs
As Being a Former State Director, and I Feel Real Good About Having a
Perspective and Understanding about How to Meld And to Tie a Lot of
These Things Together. But I Would Encourage Folks All Across the Board
to Understand What Goes on on the Other Side Of That Fence. We Need to
Know and Understand The Problems of Our Neighbors, And to the Extent We
Can Help And Assist Through New Techniques, Then I Think They Will
Appreciate That. Then Last, We must Focus at this Point in Time on
Short‑term Delivery of Our Products. While, at the Same Time, Keeping
That Big Picture in Balance. That\'s Not to Say That We Won\'t Continue
to Have to Put a Lot of Work into Strategic Plans and to Know Where
We\'re Going over on The Horizon and Make Plans for That, but Our
Customers and the Folks on the Ground and in the Industry, per Se, at
this Point Is Looking for Short‑term Deliveries, Projects That Can
Produce Products in Six to Eight Months Seems to Be the Trend Today. No
Longer Are We Going to Be Able to Spend Two, Three, Five, Ten Years on
Large Projects That Somehow or Another Seem to Be Obsolete Before They
Ever Get Launched. And with That, I Guess I Would Be Interested, Folks,
If You Have Anything to Add as IRM Chiefs That ‑‑ from the Field
Perspective You Think Could Help Make Us Successful.

North: Well, I Think There\'s A Couple of the Goals That Work Together.
When You\'re Talking about Going Across the Program Boundaries And
Understanding What We\'re Doing Outside of IRM, One of the Things That
We Can Do to Build The Program\'s Confidence in What We Do Is to Achieve
Those Short‑term Goals and If We Can Demonstrate We Can Set a Goal And
Achieve It, Then That Builds Their Confidence and Builds a Momentum and
a Support from the Program Arena for the IRM Support Function. So I
Think It\'s Something That Is ‑‑ Goals That Work Together To Take Us
into the Future.

Tipton: Chris Is Very Much Like Myself, Results Oriented, He Has That
Field Perspective of Let\'s Do and it Get it Done. Patience Has Not Been
One of My Virtues, I Admit That up Front. But BLM Is Bless the by Having
All Sorts of People with Temperaments and Good Planners And That
Balance, I Am Sure, Is What Is Going to Make it Work For Us. We Have
Tried to Set Some Goals Of How Things Might Be Different Or Where We\'re
Going in the Coming Year and Maybe in Some of The out Years, and I Would
Just Like to Quickly Go Through Some Of Those So That We Can Make That a
Little ‑‑ as Visible as We Can. One of the Things That You Heard A Lot
About, or Maybe Some of You Haven\'t Heard a Lot About, Is the Ongoing
Effort to Complete Our Architectural Enterprise. That\'s a Big Word.
It\'s a Mouthful. It\'s Not Very Easily Understood At First Glance. So I
Wanted to Try to Explain Why and What the Architectural Enterprise Is
Trying to Accomplish and When We Might Have Some Results from That. But
If You Look at Where We Are In Our Systems and Projects Under the
Current Scenario, You Can See That We Have a Lot of Stand Jaw Loan
Applications. Now, These Have Been Called Stovepipes in Some Terms, but
They Really Don\'t Link, They Don\'t Have Much Sharing Between Them a
Second Point to Make on That There Is a Lot of Redundant Data and
Process Inconsistent Technology That\'s Inherent Within These Current
Systems. We Want to Use Data in as Many Places as We Can. We Want to
Have as Many Common Definitions as We Possibly Can. Now, Where Do We
Want to Go? You Have to Have a Target. To Get this out of the Abstract.
And Our Target for Our Architecture Comes to Having More Integrated
Common Components. We Have to Have Work That Cuts Across Our Many
Activities That We Have, and Then We Want a Nonredundant Functionality.
This Is Another One of the Buzz Words That We\'re Learning and Trying to
Pass on Within the IRM Into the Jargon. Our Goal Is to Enter Data One
Time and Use it Many Times. You Will Be Hearing More and More of That
Phrase. Our Databases Are Going to Be Constructed to Be as Useful as
They Can, and Not Just Necessarily from BLM, but from Within the
Department, Usgs, the Forest Service, Other Bureaus. We Want to Be Able
to Use That Data, Collect as Little as We Have To, but Use it as Broadly
As We Possibly Can. Now, How Do We Get There? Well, We Get There by
Developing Some Common Standards and Principles to Start With. This Is
Not Easy. We Have Years in Trying to Operate Within Different States And
Different Areas Where the Terms and the Numbers and Things Mean
Different Represent Things To Different People. They\'ve Used Them in
Different Ways, All Legitimate at the Time, but Difficult Now to Manage
When You\'re Trying to Standardize and to Use Things in An Efficient and
a More Common Manner on That. So in Getting There, as I Said, We\'re
Going to Develop What We Call a Common Repository Framework for That,
and We\'ve Bought Some Software That Is Being Tested Now and Actually Is
Available in Some Pilot Areas. We Need to Establish Also Some Technology
Direction. We Need to Let Folks Across the Board Know Exactly the Things
That We\'ve Tried, the Things That Work and to Get That Word Out and to
Get That out in Good, Clear Policies. We Need Development Strategies. In
Doing This, We Need to Work Together to Figure out How Exactly to Tie a
Lot of These Things Together, How to Make the Programs Work Together in
a Relational Sense. I Was Amazed in Coming to BLM And Learning That
There Are Some 800 Different Databases Floating Around out There That We
Do Our Business from and I\'m Not Sure What the Right Number, Is but My
Intuition Says it Needs to Be a Lot less than That. So We Need to
Continue to Try to Optimize the Data on That. And Then We Have the
Deployment Approach. That\'s Where You Guys Come in And Making it
Happen. Getting it out There and Doing More than Just Talking about It.
This Is Where Us Results Oriented Folks Can Make a Major Contribution.
Ongoing Architectural Management ‑‑ Now, this ‑‑ by March We Hope To
Have a Framework That Will Be Understandable and We Could Put Out So
People Can See Why this Is Touching Everything. This Is Not Just an IRM
Project. This Will Tie Together Human Resource Management Programs and
Issues, it Will Tie Together the Business Approaches to Doing Things, as
Well as Our On‑the‑ground Resource Programs. So the Message We\'re
Trying to Send Here Is That Information Technology Is Everyone\'s Issue.
It\'s Not Something That You Can Look to Your IRM Folks and Have Them
Solve That Problem for You. We Want to Make it Part of the Program from
the Beginning and Develop it from There. Another Goal Is to Design Our
Projects for Quick Delivery, Responding to an Important Business Need.
Now, We Want That Need to Address from the Ground Up, from Our
Entrepreneurs. You Have a Pressing Problem, Then They Need to Come to
the IRM, into Our Business, for Support and Development of That
Particular Issue. We Need to Have Sponsors for These Projects, Because
They Do Consume a Lot of Our Budget. And If Everyone Is in Agreement
That We Have Something That\'s Worth Developing and Bringing on And
Investing In, Then We\'ll Have the Buy‑in, it Will Be Used And We Will
Get the Most Mileage Out of That. Another Thing That We Want to Do From
the Standpoint of Goals Is To Improve Our Credibility in The IRM
Community. If You Recall a Couple of Years Ago, We Had a Bureauwide
Survey On Customer Service and Delivery, and Not That BLM Across the
Board Set Any Records On Customer Service and Standards for That, but
IRM, and Some Other Areas, Scored Particularly Low on That. So We\'ve
Been Looking at Those Areas Where We Got the Low Marks, Figure Out, What
Is it That We Can Do Better, and See If We Can\'t Raise That on the Next
Survey. By the Way, That Survey, I Think, Is Either out Now or Soon To
Be Out. So We\'ll Have a New Measuring Point on That. We Want to Improve
Communication And Provide More Feedback to Employees and to Our Public
About What\'s Going On. We Are in an Area of Massive Change, Change
Agents Are in Their Heyday and by Having Six Different Job Titles in
Seven Years, I Have to like Change Whether I like it or Not, and I Have
\'\' Really Grown to like It. IRM Professionals, Computer People, Are in
a World That Change Happens Often in Days and Months and Not Years
Anymore. So It\'s Just Something That We Have to Learn to Adapt to and
to Learn to Work with and That to Take Advantage of It. Part of That ‑‑
in Part of That Vein, We\'re Looking at Restructuring the IRM Function
In BLM. Too Many Times We Get Ourselves Into a Structure, Positions
Accumulate and We Don\'t Look Forward to How the World Has Changed
Around Us. We Have Major Projects That Come And They Go and Then We Need
to Adapt to it to Adjust Because of That. So We\'re Taking a Very
Serious Look ‑‑ I Want to Talk about This a Little More Later in the
Program, but We\'re Taking a Very Serious Look at Restructuring IRM from
the National Point of View, and We\'re Also Talking With Folks like
Yourself and the State Directors about the IRM Staffs in States Just to
See How We Can Make All of These Different Organizations Fit Together.
Cios and Cio Type Structures Are New in a Way. It\'s a New Type
Organization With a New Type of Thinking. So We Need to Make Sure That
We\'re Internally Structured to Deliver What\'s Required of That
Function. And Another Goal Is to Make Sure We Get the Most out of Our
Investment Dollars. This Is a Rule That\'s Really Being Applied to All
of Our Programs, and Many of You out There Are Probably Involved in Abc
Costing and You\'re Getting Used to a New Way of Keeping up With Your
Time and Charging Back To Programs. So IRM Is No Different on That. In
That Regard, We Even Have a Separate Laws and Rules That Require Us to
Do Sound Project Management, to Account for These Costs and to Actually
Calculate Rates of Return on the Money That We Spend and Invest Back
Into That. One of the Things to Keep in Mind on That Is with the
Exception of Almrs, Which Is No Longer with Us, the Dollars to Develop
Your Programs or Develop Your Information Technology Incentives and
Initiatives Really Comes from Your Programs. We Have to Sacrifice from
Those Programs on a Case‑by‑case Basis To Address the I.t. Component Of
What We Do. So We Owe it to Those Folks on The Ground and That Are
Running Our Resource Programs to Account Back to Them What it Is That
We\'re Spending and What They\'re Getting for It, and We\'re Addressing
a Need They Brought To Our Attention. Then Lastly, You\'ve Always Heard
Of \"Don\'t Sweat the Small Stuff And Everything Is Small Stuff.\" I
Take a Different Look at That. I Do Believe in Sweating the Small Stuff.
Our Perceptions, Our Credibilities Often Are Formed About How Quickly We
Provide Service to Our Customers, How Quickly Do You Get That Computer
Up and Running and We Have to Keep in Our Minds at this Point That When
a Person\'s Computer Is Down, More than ‑‑ in a Matter Of Minutes,
Anymore, it Seems Like They\'re Doing Some Idle Time. They\'re Basically
out of Work. And Many of Us Are in Positions And Places Where We Can\'t
Say, \"Ah, Computer Is Down, Great, Good Opportunity to Go out to The
Field and Do Some Real Work.\" Chris, You and Robin Can Do That, but
Many of Our Folks Don\'t Have That Luxury. So We Need to Understand What
The Little Things Are That People Expect from Us, Because, You Know,
They May Not Be Little Things at All. Once We Can Deliver More on That,
I Think That Will Go a Long Ways Towards Changing Some Of the
Perceptions about Our Capabilities. So Those Are Our Goals for the
Coming Year, and We May Have Left Some Things Out, but We\'ve Got So
Many Things out There to Do, I Figure Focus Is Something That We Need to
Spend Some Time On and Make Sure That We Don\'t Try to Solve All of
These Problems at Once, and More or Less Break Them down into Bite‑size
Chunks.

Stoebe: I Have a Question for You, Tip, since Your Last Job Was State
Director of Eastern States, I Know That You\'re Close To Your Other
Peers, Other State Directors and I\'m Curious as to What Kind of
Personal Feedback You Have Goten from the Other State Directorers, the
Other A.d.s There in Washington in Regards to the Goals You Have Been
Talking Us to about or Maybe Their Expectations for What IRM Is Going to
Do for Them In the Coming Year or Two.

Tipton: We Have Had Several Discussions and It\'s Been on the Executive
Leadership Team Agenda For the Last Two Meetings We\'ve Had. You Know,
Guys, We Are in a Competitive Situation When it Comes to Dollars. The
State Directors and the Assistant Directors and All of Us Are Looking at
Our Total Expenditures, and I Think the Number I\'ve Heard Is That
We\'ve Spent in the Neighborhood of \$155 Million Last Year on
Information Technology. You Know, That Includes a Lot of Things When You
Stop and Think About It. But That\'s a Significant Part of The BLM
Budget. And When State Directors and Assistant Directors See That Number
and this Is Not a Number That They\'ve Had Before, Then They\'re Really
Wondering, \"Is That the Right Number? Wow, I Could Have Done a Lot of
On the Ground Projects for Some Of That Money.\" So They\'re
Questioning, Really, \"Are We Giving Value Back, Adding Value to the
Process? Are We Being Efficient? And Is That the Place That They Want to
Spend Those Type of Dollars?\" So They\'re Very Interested in It, and
the Last Leadership Team Was Quite Exciting in That All Of the State
Directors Were Fully Engaged in the Discussions, and They\'re Really
Interested in Where We\'re Going With Our Overall Enterprise
Architecture.

Stoebe: Good.

Tipton: We Have a Few Points I Wanted to Make in Our Plan for What We
Call IRM 2000 and Just Let Me Go Through Those, If I Could, Guys, and
Maybe We\'ll Take Some Discussion on That. In Planning for the Coming
Year, We Really Have to Recognize That Information Technology Is and Is
Going to Continue to Be a Major Factor in How BLM Conducts its Business.
Now, You Know, at this Point None of Us Know Really What the Right
Expenditure or Obligation To Information Technology Is. We Simply Know
it Has to Be There. That\'s the Way the World Has Developed. You Know,
Those Programs and Operations, All of Those Programs, Have to Use
Information Technology to Keep Pace. If You Snooze, You Lose in this
World. And to Deliver Timely Service Back to the Public, the Congress
And All, Information Technology, Records Management, All of This,
Providing That Information, Which Is Our Job, It\'s Just Critical to
Have the Most Efficient, Modern Means to Do That. So with That in Mind,
Then Information Technology Is Going To Continue to Consume a
Significant Portion of Our Budget. We Just Want to Make Sure That We
Know What it Is, We Can Plan For it and Not Simply See a Number or a
Scorecard at the End Of the Year That, Gees, You Spent a Whole Lot of
Money for I.t., What Did We Get for It? We Have to Assure, Again, That
Our Investments Fit the Architecture That We\'re Working On and Then
Provide a Strong Return on Investment. You Know, Again, It\'s Not Only
Good Business, It\'s the Law. And We Have Numerous Groups Looking over
Our Shoulder Expecting Reports, Doing Briefings and Keeping Score on Us.
So We Have a Lot of Things Going That Are Trying to Get Our Arms Around
That. But We Really Haven\'t Rated out Very Well So Far in Our Ability
To Do That. So It\'s Going to Take a Lot of Work from a Lot of People,
and The Expectations Are Pretty Quick from Us. I Want to Also Be Sure
That Our BLM Managers Are Involved in Some of These Large Financial
Information Technology Decisions. You Probably Have Had an Experience
Sometime in Your Career That a System Was Developed, a Program Was
Bought, Purchased and Come and Handed to You and Say, \"All Right, Guys,
We Just Got a Good Deal on This, We Had Some People Develop this
Program, It\'s Going to Make Your Life Simpler, Go Implement It.\" You
Probably Didn\'t React to That Very Positively. So We Want to Try to
Change That, That Approach. Now, When We Do Automate a Lot Of Our
Business, There Seems to Be a Tendency to Simply Automate Yesterday\'s
Business Practices. We Did it That Way for 25 Years. I Don\'t like
Change. Just Program it for Me. Well, One of Our Objectives Here Is to
Avoid Doing That. So the First Step in Things like This Is Going to Be
to Take a Look at Reengineering That Process. How Many Steps Can You Cut
out Of this Process? Let\'s See How Simple We Can Make It. The Simpler
You Can Make the Process, the Simpler You Can Make the Programs to Make
it Automated and to Operate It. So That Will Be One of Our Goals. Also,
We Want to Work as One BLM To Apply Our Information Technology to Our
Most Important Business Needs. Now, What I Mean by \"One BLM,\" We\'re
Looking at the Moment out Into All of Your State Offices, Trying to Do
an Inventory of What Kind of Good Projects, Good Ideas Do You Have
Ongoing So That We Can Sort of Sort Those Out and as Well as to Use the
Vast Pool of Talent That You Have out There in Your Offices To Help Do
These Things on a Broader Basis. Because Oftentime We Think When We
Develop Something in State, We Think, this Is Unique, It\'s Something
Only Fitting for Eastern States or for Montana or Arizona, and We Really
Don\'t Think Far Enough out That, Well, You Know, Maybe All Three of Us
Could Use That, and If We Get Our People Together and We Talk It Through
and We Kind of Scope How Much Money it Would Take, We Could Develop
Something That We Could All Benefit and Share From, and it Would
Probably Cost Us less Effort in Resources and In Dollars. So We Want to
Use Our Entire Pool and Let\'s Not Look at IRM As Something of a Major
‑‑ Even Of a Major Instance That Comes Out of a National Office. We Also
Want to Establish Some Service‑level Agreements Throughout BLM to
Provide Better Service and to Establish Reasonable Expectations on Our
Folks. We\'re Going to Talk about Some Studies That We\'ve Had Done on
This a Little Bit Later, but One Thing That Really Comes to Mind On this
Is, When We\'re Trying to Deliver Within Our Capabilities One Level of
Service and the Folks That You\'re Delivering the Service for Have an
Entirely Different Expectation or Need of What They Want and They Don\'t
Match up or We Haven\'t Negotiated or Talked about It, Then You Have a
Recipe for Disaster. You\'re Going to Be Frustrated And They\'re Going
to Be Unhappy And Critical of the Services You Have. So We\'re Going to
Walk Through Exactly What We Can Deliver, the Money That We Want to
Invest in This, the Money That They Want To Invest in this and See What
They Want to Buy Back from Us And See How That Works. Another Thing That
I Wanted to Talk about Just Quickly Is Some Improvement in Our
Contracting Practices. I\'m Sure All of You out There at One Point in
Your Career Otherwise Have Had a Bad Contracting Experience. You\'ve
Tied into a Contract and You\'ve Been Unhappy with What\'s Been
Delivered on the Contract, And Sometimes You Get into These Contracts
and You Have this Feeling, You Can\'t Get out of It. Just by the Way the
Contract Has Been Written. So I\'ve Had Several Discussions With the
Business Center, Assistant Director Doyle, and Dennis Sykes, Myself and
Many of The Contracting People Have Sat Down and Looked at How Can We
Tighten up Our Contracting Operations? We Have Worked out Some
Agreements That Will Involve More People in the Finalization Of Those
Contracts. We Will Be Assured, for Example, That Our Significant
Contracts Have Scopes of Work. I Mean, It\'s Hard to Justify Passing out
Lots of Money for Contracts That It\'s Not Clear to You, the Public or
Other Folks Who Are Looking for Maybe a Potential Contract, What Is That
Contract Supposed to Deliver? So Then That Leads to Performance
Standards Wan Contract. What Are You Supposed to Get out Of That? What
Are Your Products? Identify Those. And Then, Again, Try to Get Those
Things Delivered Good, Sharp, Crisp, Clear Task Orders. I Believe ‑‑ I
Believe We Can Make Some Major Strides and Efficiencies in Understanding
How All of These Different Contracts Fit Together and We Do Have a Lot
of Contracts. We Spend a Lot of Our Money with Outside Sources on This.
It\'s Just like Money We Spend Inside, We Want to Get the Most Value for
That Money. And, Again, as I Said Earlier, We Are Going to Reengineer
and To Restructure IRM. And along Those Lines, We Have Put Together a
Couple of Teams. One Is to Do a Survey of Our Information Resource
Management Talent. We Need to Know What Our People Are Doing Now, How
That Might Be Different than What They Were Doing Last Year or a Few
Years From Now, What Are They Capable Of Doing, What Kind of Training Do
They Think They Need and Get Some Ideas about How They Might Fit into a
New Organization. The Second Team Is More of a Technical Team That Is
Looking At the Structure, a Potential Structure. They Are Looking at
Other Organizations. They\'re Looking at Other Devices And
Infrastructures, Other Departments Bureaus May Have Used and They\'re
Going to Make Some Recommendations Around the First Week of December as
to What Type of Skills We May Need For the Future, Some Rough Estimate
about How Many We Might Need, How That Might Fit with What\'s out There
in the State Offices and How Things Might Change in the State Offices
Structures Just So That We Can All Work Together on That. This Is Very
Interesting Team And We Purposefully Have a Wide Variety of
Personalities and Professionals on this Team, Most Of Which Are Field
Folks. We Have Several IRM Chiefs on That Team. We Have Some Washington
People. We Have Some Departmental People On This, and We Also Have Some
Advice Coming from Other Departments on How this Might Turn Out. And
Then There\'s General Project Management. We\'ve Had Lots of Advice on
How To Shape up Our General Project Management, to Define the Boundaries
of These Projects a Little Better, Know Exactly What It Is That They\'re
Delivering, What the Time Frames Are and What the Schedules on These Are
Supposed to Be. So We Intend to Improve Our Ground‑up Project Management
Skills Just to Guarantee That Strong Return on Investments. We Found
That the Great Majority Of Our Successful Projects Have Come from Our
Entrepreneurs on The Ground, the Folks That Aren\'t Computer
Specialists, and They Don\'t Even in Many Cases Have Even Computer
Science Backgrounds or Degrees. But the Key to Their Success Is They
Know the Business. They Know the Business and They Have this Fascination
or this Knack for Tying That to a Computer Literacy That Seems to Make
These Things Work, and We Really, Really Want to Capitalize on That. If
You Had a Project, the Ideal Project Manager, I Think it Was
Robbins‑gioia Report Described, They Would Have a Geology or a Resource
Background of Some Sort And Then a Computer Science Background as Well.
That Would Be Your Perfect Project Manager. But to Me, I Think That
Experience from the Field Even Counts for More than a Lot of The
Technical Background and Science on That. So We\'re Spending a Lot of
Time And a Lot of Effort to Develop Some Good, Sound Project Managers.
You Can Actually Become Certified as a Project Manager Now. It Shows
Just How Important That Function Is and How It\'s Recognized in Future
Organizations. Then We Want to ‑‑ I Am Going to Talk about Overhauling
Our Investment ‑‑ Our Information Technology Investment Board and The
Charter and Process to Make That Entire Process More User‑friendly,
Efficient and Effective from What I Call the Cradle to the Grave, and
That\'s From the Entrepreneurs\' Point of View on This, All Wait to When
The Program Loses its Usefulness And We Decide to Put it Away. That,
Again, I Think We Are Discovering Is One of Our Problems. We Develop a
Project, We Get a Program Going, and it May Have Had a Lot of People
That ‑‑ it Had Utility for in the Onset, But All of a Sudden, a Time
Passes it By, the Need Sort of Lapses or Fades Away and There May Be Two
or Three or a Dozen People That Use this Program, But Still We Have That
Can‑do BLM Attitude That Maintains It. It Keeps it Going, and We Really
Don\'t Plan or Anticipate Just How Much All this Maintenance Is Costing
Us. So We Have to Think about Things Like That and Each Step of Our
Process from That Cradle, the Entrepreneur Developing the Project,
Getting it off the Ground to the Grave Has to Have Some Type of
Monitoring on It. So Our Heavy Weights, the People Out There Really
Working this From the Business Need, Again, Are Entrepreneurs. Then Our
Entrepreneurs, at this Point What We\'re Envisioning Is Developing a
Clearinghouse. Now, this Clearinghouse Will Have All of Our Best
Practices Stored There, an Inventory of The Systems That You Folks Have
Developed out There in the States, and it Will Have All of This
Categorized and Sorted and It Will Be a Basic Resource Point for Our
Entrepreneurs. They Can Go in There and They Can Take a Close Look, See
What They Find. Is There Something That\'s Close To What My Business
Need Is That May Avoid Me Having to Spend My Program Dollars to Develop
This? Maybe There\'s Something over in Usgs That\'s Close. Or Montana
May Have Something That California Could Use. And You Partner up and You
Go Through and You Just See How Broad That Application Is. Then, Within
That Project Management Coordination Configuration, You Go Through
There, You Talk That over with The People Who Can Help You out On It,
and We Would Expect Our Project Management Coordination Function to
Provide Feedback to That Entrepreneur. \"This Is How You Do It, this Is
What the Rules Are, We\'re Going To Help You Fill out All this
Burdensome Paper Work That You See That Is Required to Meet the Test of
Efficiency, Rates of Return and to Prove That this Project Is Not Only a
Good Investment, but the Best Investment That We Want to Make And That
There\'s Really Not Anything out There That We Can Use.\" And I Want to
Involve You Guys As the IRMAC Chiefs and the IRMAC Advisory Committee in
Screening Some of These Projects, Making Sure That You As
Representatives of the State Offices Endorse That this Is a Legitimate,
Valid Need and We Think it Needs Further Development. Once We Do
Something like That, We Can Then Pass That on to the Investment Board
and it Will Be Fleshed Out. It Will Be Staffed Out, and it Will Have the
Support of the Bureau. You Know, and Hopefully We Will Have at the
Investment Board Level a Number of These Projects That We Can Look at
and Judge From Those Projects Which One Is The Best, Which Ones Do We
Want To Fund this Year and Maybe We\'ll Even Fund All of Them If You
Look over in the Corner of The Budget Strategy Team, Which Is Another
New Unit That Was Formed Last Year, That to Make Some Major Decisions on
How We Want to Spend the Budget\'s Dollars. Now, One of the Thoughts in
This, and this Again Is Coming From Your Question Earlier, Robin, What
Are the A.d.s and State Directors Thinking about In Terms of the
Investment Board And Investing Dollars in IRM? They Are Concerned about
Doing In That an Ad Hoc, Uncontrolled Fashion. So What You See Coming
out of That Budget Team Will Be Some Money That Is Set Aside for
Conscious Project Development. And Then That Will Be a Vehicle By Which
in Collaboration with The Itib, the Investment Board, Can Determine What
the Need Is And Provide an Incentive Back to Our Entrepreneurs That
Great Ideas, Good Projects Will Be Funded in this Mechanism, and That We
No Longer Can Be Undisciplined to the Sort That We Just Spend Program
Dollars Without Actually Consciously Doing it in an Organized Approach.
So Then We Would Have a Good Idea, That Good Idea Would Then Be Funded
and We Would Manage That Back Through the Entrepreneur. The Entrepreneur
Becomes a Hero, They Have a National System, and They Have Some Money
Back for And it You Didn\'t Have to Spend Your Valuable, Vital Program
Dollars on the Ground to Get There.

Stoebe: I Got a Couple Questions for You. I Would like to Pick Your
Brain A Little Bit. A Couple Things I Would like to Try to Tie Together
in a Question. One Is the Applications Inventory You Talked about and
The Other Is Getting BLM Managers More Involved in What\'s Going On. An
Example of Where I\'m Heading At on this Is How Do We Get the BLM
Managers, the A.d.s, the State Directors More Involved With These
Application Decision‑making or Utilizing the Applications or
Supportingsing These Applications That Are Already Developed or Soon to
Be Developed. The Example That I Thought Worked Really Well Was When 9
You a Hatfield Was the A.d. for Business Practices and Decide to Do
Adopt Arizona\'s Budget Application. And She Sponsored That, She, You
Know, Wrapped Her Arms Around That, and Then Took it the next Step of
Developing it into the Mis System and I Thought That Was a Good Example
of What I Would Expect to See Higher Management Do Proactively with
What\'s Already Going on in the IRM Practices. Making Inventories of
What We\'ve Got, Setting up Boards to Do This Doesn\'t Seem to Get Us to
The next Step of What I Think What Nina Did with the Mis. I Guess My
Question to You, Long Question Though it Is, Is, Do You See Something
like That as Being a Goal or Do You Have Ideas along Those Lines How You
Can Stimulate Other A.d.s and State Directors to Do Something Along
Those Lines?

Leading by Example, I Think, Is the Best Way to Get Those Type of Things
Done, Robin. You\'re Right, a Lot of Good Things Seem to Come out of
Arizona. Chris, I\'ll Give You a Share of The Credit for That. The Good
Ideas That Spring up From the Ground, They Need to Be Nurtured, We Need
to Know Where They Are. But, on the Other Hand, We\'re Also Talking with
A.d.s and State Directors about Being a Little More out Front and Trying
To Corral Some of Those Good Ideas. Look at Your Programs. First of All,
What Business Need You Have to That You Think Is Suffering from Lack of
Automation? Then We Can Look ‑‑ Match That Up Against What\'s Going On.
If There\'s Nothing Going On, We Can Ask Why Not. We Can Look at the
Many State IRM Teams That Are out There and Just See If They Have the
Capability to Take on a Contract As a State Office to Develop Something
like That. But You\'re Absolutely Right. The Type of Things That Catch
on That Have the Support up and Down the Line Seem to Be the Ones That
Really Take Root and They\'re Developed Right from the Beginning.
That\'s the Thing That to Me Is As Important as Anything Else in This,
Is There Are Lots of Good Ideas out There, and Those Good Ideas Need to
Get off on the Right Foot. So When They Do Go and They Check out Our
Clearing House and They See What\'s in There, They Will Also Have
Someone That Can, As We Assign to Sit down to Explain, \"Ok, Guys, These
Are The Guidelines, These Are the Things You Need to Consider from An
Architectural Point of View To Make Sure the Way You Collect Your Data,
Your Nomenclature, Your Program Structure, All Fits Back on this
Architecture.\" So Maybe it Is a Local Unique System That Will Never Be
Used Nowhere Else. But Keep this in Mind, If You Want to Go to That next
Level, You Are Going to Have to Make The System Conform to Where All 12
State Offices Can Use It. And You\'re Taking a Big Risk If You Want to
Deviate from That, Because You\'ll Probably Always Simply Be a Unique
System That\'s Trying to Find Some Money Somewhere to Do It. And the
Message Being, it Will Be More and More Difficult to Do That from a
Funding Point of View If You Aren\'t Meeting the Guidelines.

North: and I Think, Too, the Enterprise Architecture Effort, That\'s ‑‑
I\'m a Member of the Team, and One of the Focuses of That Group Is to
Bring from the Top Down, from the A.d. Level What Their Initiatives Are,
but Also to Capture What\'s Going on At a Business Level at a Different
Part of the Organization at the Field Level, At the State Office Level
and Marry Those Two Together So That We Capitalize on the Efforts at
Those Different Levels of the Organization, but We\'re Also Capturing
and Meeting the Missions and Goals of Those Particular Programs at the
Washington Office and Bureau Level. And That Enterprise Architecture Is
the Mechanism We Will Use to Make Sure We Keep Those in Alignment.

Tipton: this Is a Very Difficult Task We Are All Trying To Do Here
Because it Is So New. It\'s Really a Foreign Concept to The Way We\'ve
Done Business Historically. So We Just Have to Stay with It. Robin,
Before We Run out of Time, I\'d like to Quickly React And to Just Relay
Some Information from a Couple of Very Significant Reports That Have
Been in the Works over the Last Year. One of These Is Called the Harris
Study. The Harris Study Involved a Consultant to Review the IRM Customer
Service, and it Came Sort of on the Heels Following Last April\'s Gao
Report. In Harris, What They Had Pointed Out to Us Is That There Needs
to Be a More Standardized Approach To IRM, You Know and We\'ve Talked a
Bit about That. They Also Said We Needed to Have Our ‑‑ to Improve Our
Planning Efforts, to Further Reduce Costs Within Our Program. Now,
Ironically Enough, They Noted That as a Bureau, We Spend Less than the
Normal Amount of Money on Information Technology Than a Lot of
Companies, but on The Other Hand, They Said, \"You\'re Not Getting Much
for the Money That You Spend.\" So They Weren\'t Impressed at All By Our
Funding and Budgeting Practices on That. They Made an Observation That
The Helpdesk Support Should Be Centralized. Each of You Have Your Own
Helpdesk Operation and That Was ‑‑ They Were Simply Saying We Could Save
Some Money by Doing That and I Think That Was One of The Concepts of
Almrs That, Maybe Given Us Something That We Can Take a Look at and Get
Some Benefit From. They Felt the End User Soft Costs Are out of Hand.
What Does That Mean? That\'s More IRM Jargon, Which Simply Means We Buy
a Lot of Stuff on Credit Cards. We Buy a Lot of Stuff That We Really
Don\'t Know Where it Shows Up in the Accounting Procedures. And Don\'t
Think Now That We\'re Going to Say, You Can\'t Buy Anything Else on
Credit Cards, Because We\'re Not Going to Do That. That Was a Valuable
Step Forward In Streamlining Government, But, On the Other Hand, We Do
Need to Know What We Buy and We Need to Know All of Those Costs Because,
As it Turns Out, That Was a Whole Heck of a Lot More Money Than You
Might Have Imagined on It. So We Will Sort That out and Do A Better
Accounting of It. They Observed Also That Overall Satisfaction with
Information Technology Support Is Poor, and Their Study, by the Way, Was
Limited to Support‑type Operations. In Five Evaluation Categories Which
They Rated Us, We Were Not Satisfactory in Any of Those. So That Leaves
Us a Lot of Room For Improvement. As a Result of All of That, They
Recommended a Concept Called Seat Management. Now, Seat Management, for
Those Of You Who Haven\'t Heard That Term Before, Is Basically
Contracting out Our IRM Function To a Larger Company, to a Company Who
Presumably Has More Expertise in Managing and Taking Care of Desktops
and Your Networks than We Might Have, and The Reason That So Many
Companies Are Going to this Is That They Do Not Want to Hire The
Expertise to Keep up with Today\'s Fast Changing World on Data Systems
and Your Communication Systems. So If They\'re in the Business of
Building Widgets, They Say We Want to Build Widgets and We Will Get
Somebody Who Knows What To Do to Run IRM. I Really Don\'t Think That
We\'re In That Position. Next of All, the Government Doesn\'t Work
Exactly like the Private Industry When it Comes To Making Those Type of
Decisions. I Think What We Learned from From Harris in That Drastic of a
Recommendation If That They Were Really Comparing Our Costs in a Manner
That We Had Never Really Looked At. We\'re Not Even Sure at this Point
That We Fully Agree with The Way They Accounted and Laid The Costs Out.
But They Were Saying a Seat Management Contract Would Develop a Service
Level Agreement and They Would Promise Their Customer a Computer Service
Within a Certain Amount Of Time and Then the Customer Would Understand
That and it Would Pay You for That and You Could Save Some Money by
Doing That Versus What You\'ve Spent. Well, We Really Don\'t Have
Service‑level Agreements? So How Can We Compare That Historically? But
What We Do Have Is 800‑some‑odd IRM Professionals That at this Point We
Want to Go Back and I Think You Guys Are Doing This, Going Back to Your
Offices and Looking at Let\'s See What a True Comparison of These Costs
Might Be, and If We Get Nothing Else out of This, We Are Going to Learn
at Least What Service Level Agreements Look Like and How to Deliver That
Better Service to Our Customers, And Also We Will Be Able to Look At Our
Cost Structure, What Is It Costing Us to Deliver That Service? Then We
Can Ask Those Customers, \"Is this Enough? Do You Want Quicker Service,
Premium Service, Faster Service?\" I Want Everybody to Be Assured We Are
Not Rushing to Implement That Seat Management Concept in BLM. I See it
as a Last Alternative, Frankly. It\'s Hard Enough to Keep Good IRM
Professionals on Board. The Market out There Is Very, Very Challenging
and Lucrative For IRM Professionals Right Now. It\'s Very Difficult for
Us to Hire IRM Professionals. At this Point, We\'re Not Even Sure That
That\'s What We Want to Do. We Want to Hire ‑‑ IRM Professionals, but We
Also Want To Be Able to Take Advantage of Good Contracts with Some
Outsourcing Units That Can Provide Sharp Up‑to‑date Technical Expertise
Way May Only Need for a Short Period of Time. But by and Large, it
Changes and Your Skills Become So Obsolete That Before You Know It, You
Got To Go Back to School and You Have to Retrain Those Type of Folks.
Robin\'s Did ‑‑ Robbins‑gioia Did Interviews with a Lot of You and They
Told Us a Lot of Things Many of You Already Knew. They Also Rated Us
Very Low in Terms of Customer Support, Customer Satisfaction the Way We
Monitor Our Projects, Our Investments. And These Many Recommendations
Have Been Consolidated and We\'re Now Reviewing Them as to Their
Relevance and Will Make Determinationses to Which Ones We Think Should
Be Implemented And When Should We Go about Implementing Those. So BLM
Will Implement a Project Management Office of Sorts to Address the
Multiple Level of These Recommendations. One in There That We Talked
About a Little Earlier Was Establishing a Clearing House For Good Ideas
and this Clearing House, We Can Put a Lot of Innings There. We Can Put
Our Good Business Practices in It, We Can Put Our Common Data Repository
in There, And it Can Be a Good Place for People to Go to to Find out
What\'s Going on and How to Get Involved in It. So I Would like to Add
That Both Of These Studies Are Available For You to Review on the BLM
Internal IRM Homepage. Beyond That, I Guess a Reaction To These Reports
Has Led to Putting Together Our Functional Team, Which Is Led by Kathy
Eaton, the Dsd from Oregon, by The Way, and in Reviewing Our Full
National IRM Organization, And Both of These Teams Are Considering the
Recommendations By Harris and Robbins‑gioia and The Upcoming Results
from the Enterprise Architecture Team Which We Hope to Have by the End
Of March. Now, the Results of Both Efforts Will Provide IRM
Recommendations For Optimally Functioning Cio Based Operation. That\'s
My Hope and Goal. We Do Need to Anticipate a Realignment of Staff
Through Placement of National Projects, Other Organizations or Through
Retirement, Because We\'ve Been Very Frank in Open Employee Meetings
That Thanks Change That\'s Coming, and That We Need To Plan for it Now.
In Sort of Doing That, I Look Back at the Profile of Employees In BLM
and Particularly in IRM, And I\'m Amazed at How Our Workforce as Aged,
Including Myself. I\'m Holding the Age up at this Point. But Our Average
Age Is Something Like 48 1/2 Years and in IRM It\'s Almost 50 Years. So
That That Represents a Lot of Institutional Knowledge. That\'s a Lot of
Knowledge That We Need to Capture Before Many Of These People Retire in
Five Years. But in Five Years, Half of Our Workforce Will Be Eligible
for Retirement, and We Need to Plan For Backfilling People Skills And
All That Now. The Time to Do That Is Now While Those Folks Are Still
with Us. That Will Give Us an Opportunity To Move into Whatever
Transition That We Have in Restructuring Without Having to Do Something
Instantaneous and We Can Make Whatever Changes We Have as Least
Disruptive as Possible, But Nevertheless, We Do Have to Be Thinking
Ahead of What People Will Be with Us a Year from Now, What Will They Be
Doing and Where Will They Be Doing It? And Even Without Any Formal
Recommendation from Our Team at This Point, We\'ve Had a Number Of
People Express Interest in Other Vacancies Within IRM, with Other State
Offices and Other Programs, and We Have Been Able To Accommodate a
Surprising Number of People at this Point About New Positions and New
Functions. So It\'s All Very Encouraging, And I\'m Convinced That Given
the Time That We Have to Make the Changes, it Can Be Done with a Minimal
Amount of Disruption. We Are Reacting to That Need for Standardization.
We Agree with That Report Finding. We Agree That We must Maximize Our
Resource Dollars. And We Have a Number of Efforts Ongoing to Try to Do
That. By the Way, We Have Just Purchased What Is Known as a Piece of
Enterprise Management Software Called Tivoli. It\'s Really a Time‑saving
Automation Tool That We\'re Convinced Is Going to Increase Our
Productivity and Customer Service. When We Talk about Increasing
Productivity and Saving Money, Generally at Some Point in the Game That
Means, Well, You\'re Going to Be Using less People to Do That. They Know
That\'s a Logical Conclusion and It\'s Probably Accurate. A Bunch of
Years from Now, We Will Probably Be Operating with Fewer IRM People than
We Have Now. Technology Has Put Us in a Position to Take Advantage of
That. But That Does Not Mean That this Is Just Something That You Buy a
Piece of Software or You Buy a Piece of Hardware, Install It, Turn on a
Key, and Then All of a Sudden Have No Further Need for The People Who
Were Doing Very Vital Functions Before. You Still Need Those Folks to Do
That Transition and I\'ve Been Advised That Many People That All Have
Doing IRM Functions in The Field Really Wear Several Hats and They\'re
Really Resource People in Many Cases, and If We Can Free up Some Time
and Make Your IRM Operations More Efficient, Then What You Have Is A
Shifting of Those People Back Into the Program Areas, and That\'s Going
to Make Your State Directors and Assistant Directors Very Happy and it
Will Make Congress Happy as Well. It Was One of the Gratifying Things on
My Last Visit with Congress Was That, We Told Them About Our Ideas of
How We Were Going to Streamline Things, and Be More Efficient in the Way
We Did Our Business and They Said, Well, That\'s Well and Good, It\'s
Good You Want to Save Money, but We Would like to See That Money Go Back
over into Your Programs, Any Money That You Save. We\'re Not Looking for
Rebates Back to Congress, Because We Recognize That the BLM Is an Agency
Which Needs All the Funding Kit Get. So That\'s Our Goal, Is to ‑‑
Funding it Can Get. That\'s Our Goal, to Make Operations as Efficient
and Customer Service Oriented as We Can and to Move as Many Dollars
Backs into Our Program as We Can.

Stoebe: Tip, We Have Call Coming In. Rather than Having Him Wait, Let\'s
Jump in on It. This Is Paul in Phoenix. Welcome, Paul. Do You Have a
Question?

Caller: Yes, I Was Wondering, If You Implement Seat Management, What\'s
Going to Happen to the Current IRM Staff?

Stoebe: Right in Line with What You\'re Talking About.

Tipton: Let Me Elaborate a Little Bit More, Paul. Seat Management, Just
Cutting Right to the Bottom on That, Does Put Us in the Position of
Having to Take Some Human Resource Management Actions with Existing
Staff. So We Would Either Have to Find Positions for Those Folks in
Other Offices or We Would Have To Do a Reduction. But Let Me Go Back to
the Point I Was Trying to Make. Seat Management Is Not Something That We
‑‑ We Would Just Automatically Do, Particularly On a Bureauwide Basis.
We Might Do That in an Area That Has Gone Back and Done Their Analysis
and Is Saying, You Know, You\'re Asking Too Much of Us in this Area, I
Don\'t Have The People Now, I Have Vacant Slots, for Example and I
Don\'t Want to Try to Hire People to Do It. Seat Management Might Work
for a Particular Office in an Isolated Situation. And We Could Pilot
That. So What I\'m Really Saying Is Before We \'Would Do Anything as
Drastic as That it Would Be Tested, and If We Did it in an Isolated
Area, We Still Have Opportunities Elsewhere in the Bureau to Try to
Manage Locations for Those Folks. But Just So You Know, We Do Recognize
That as a Last Resort Option, as I Said, Earlier, but If We Did Do That,
or If We Have To Go to Something like That, Then it Would Be Be Major
Changes for IRM Staff. That\'s the Simple Truth.

Stoebe: Does That Answer Your Question, Paul?

Caller: it Sure Does. Thank You.

Stoebe: Thank You for Calling It. Ok. Do You Remember Your Train of
Thought?

Tipton: Well, I Guess I\'m About to the End of Something ‑‑ I Was Trying
to Give Some Reactions to the Reports and What We Were Doing with Them
and Paul\'s Question Was Right On, What Are You Going to Be Doing About
Seat Management? One of the Things Today We Really Wanted to Be Clear
with Our Audience on Is That We Aren\'t Jumping to Reactions on That.
We\'re Trying to Learn from These Reports and to Make Our Existing
Operations Better. So My Challenge to the IRM Chiefs and the State
Directors Is, You Really Need to Go Back, Look at Your Operations, Make
Sure That You\'re on a Competitive Level, That You Are Doing Things with
Modern Techniques and You Got Your People Trained and the Skills Are up
to Where We Want Them to Be, and We Won\'t Need Seat Management. I\'m
Convinced That We Can Do Things Internally Just as Cheap Or Cheaper than
Paying a Big Company to Come in and Do Our Business for Us. That Leads
to a Point I Guess I Would like to Maybe Summarize On, Is IRM Needs to
Be a Part of That Base Program down on the Ground. It Needs to Be Part
of Minerals. It Needs to Be Part of the Forestry. All of the Things That
Drive it From the Ground Up. It Just ‑‑ it Just Doesn\'t Seem To Me That
it Works Very Well When You\'ve Got IRM Setting out On the Side as a
Separate Program. We Really Need to Instill in the Minds of People,
Particularly Our New People Coming In, That, Yeah, We Hired You into a
Resource Job, but You Have to Understand That Information Technology Is
a Vital Part of That Job, And, You Know, I Don\'t Think That That\'s
Going to Be a Really Big Problem, Because Look At the Backgrounds and
the Skills of the People That You\'re Hiring out of College Now, or Even
Five Years out College. They\'re Basically Computer Experts. They Know a
Lot More about Computers than Many of Us Who Have Been Working with
These Things over a Longer Period of Time. So I Think That\'s Going to
Be Sort of a Natural Attrition.

North: I Think, Too, Just to Add to What You\'re Saying, Tip, In
Considering These Options for The Future in Terms of Changing Our
Organization with the Changing Tool Sets and the Changing Technology as
it Comes Along, the Thing That We Want to Make Sure of Is That We
Capture The Unquantifiable Aspect of Having Somebody Who Is Not a
Computer Science Person, Somebody Who Has Come from a Resource Program
‑‑ Robin, You\'re a Former Range Con ‑‑ and I Look at That as an Asset.
When Somebody Comes in from a Program Area into the IRM Arena, It Makes
That Tie to That Program That Much Tighter, and The Credibility
Increases along With That. So That\'s a Part of Our IRM Staffs That I
Look at as a Positive, and Keeping That Familiarity with the Program
Areas Is Absolutely Critical.

Stoebe: I Would like to Interject Again Quick. We Have a Call Coming.
Mayor Knee Carson City, Welcome To the Show. Do You Have a Question?

Caller: Yes, I Do. I Would like to Know If There Are Plans for a
National Training Program for IRM Staff So That They Can Stay on Top of
Technology? We\'re Talking about the Age Group Changing, in Fact, You
Were Saying Most Are 47, 50, on Up. What Are We Doing to Provide
Training for Our IRM Staff on a National Level to Keep Them So That They
Do Have the Experience With the New and Changing Technology?

Tipton: I\'m So Glad You Asked That Question. You Hit on My Last Point.
While Here in Phoenix I\'ve Had a Couple of Meetings, and Earlier
Discussions with the Head of the Training Center and the Folks in The
IRM Who Are Doing the Training on Just That Very Subject. What We\'re
Talking about Are New And Better, More Expedient Ways Of Training a
Greater Number of People in the IRM Community. Just Because of the Rapid
Change In Technology, and Also Because Of What We Are Anticipating Is
Going to Be a Change of New Skills That the People on Board Are Going to
Need to Acquire. So We Do Have Ideas of Doing a Revamping of Our
Training Program on a National Basis as It Now Exists, and That\'s
Clearly on Our Radar Screen and Is a Very Good Point, Something That If
We\'re Going to Manage IRM Ourselves Internally, Then We Have to Invest
in the Training of the People That We Have.

Caller: Do You See Any of That Revamping Occurring this Next Fy?

Tipton: I\'m Going to Get it Occurring Just as Quickly as We Can. Right
Now We\'re Doing the Design Portion of It, and We\'re Alerting Each
Other for the Need To Do it and Trying to Sort out What Type of
Resources and People in the Training Center And in the IRM Chief Staffs
in The States Are Going to Be Needed to Do This. But until Some Other
Things Fall In Place, Such as Our Architecture, Our Organizational
Reviews, Our Internal Reviews of What Want to Do and What Are the New
Functions for IRM People Throughout BLM, Then We Really Don\'t Know
Precisely What it Is We Are Going to Train For. But as Soon as We Know,
Then the Training Center Assured Me They\'re Ready, Willing and Able To
Sit down with the States with The National Office and Help Us Work That
Out.

Caller: I Find That Interesting, You Know, Because Here We Are Going
Forward with New Technology, but Yet We\'re Not Providing the Training,
and ‑‑ We\'re Providing the Training Kind of after the Fact, Because
We\'re Already Going Forward into New Hardware, New Software and New
Technology, but Yet the Training, as You\'re Saying, it Looks like the
Training Won\'t Be Provided for a While down the Road.

Tipton: Well, it Sure Is Hard To Keep Up. The Training Comes of
Different Sorts, I Guess, and That\'s in Our Running Our Basic Hardware
Systems Versus Operation of Software and the Service and the Maintenance
That We Have to Provide to Keep it Going.

Caller: Ok. Thank You.

Stoebe: Thank You. Mary, Good Question. I Have to Second, I Guess, What
Mary Was Asking. That Was One of My Notes I Wanted to Bring into You. I
Think We\'ve Had a Good Track Record in the past with Ntc Providing Us
Some Technical Training When We Did the Modernization Implementation and
It Is Tough to Stay Right on Track with the New Equipment We\'re Getting
and the Training We\'re Getting and the Dollars to Support All Of. So
It\'s a Real Challenge. But Glad to See You\'re Supportive of That.
Chris Do You Have Any Perspectives Would You like to Share with Us from
the Local Stateside?

North: I Do. And I Wanted to Thank You for Giving Me the Chance to Speak
From That Perspective as Well. In Thinking about These IRM 2000 Goals
You Laid Out, There Are a Few Things That Popped into My Mind and
Probably Come to Each Of the IRM Chiefs\' Minds and What We Can Do from
Our Perspective to Support What Your Direction Is, Tip. What We\'re
Trying to Do in the State Level Is to Stay Grounded And to Stay Attached
at the Hip, If You Will, with Our Dsds and Our Field Managers and
That\'s Really How We Find Our Center in Terms of a Day‑to‑day
Operations Level. It\'s Always Interesting to Come To the National
Meetings and Come Tutor Mack Meetings, the Itib Meetings and to Learn
about What\'s Going on at That Level. It\'s Very Conceptual, Very
Strategic Level, and When We Come Back to the States, the IRM Chiefs
Have to Translate into That a Tactical Plan, Bring into It Action, Make
it Happen, Be Results Oriented in What We Do. That\'s the Biggest
Challenge, Is To Translate These High‑level Ideas and Direction into
What Happens at the State and Field Offices. The Way That I Do That, and
I Think My Counterparts Do That, Is to Build a Close Relationship With
That Dsd for Resources and The Dsd for External Affairs and My Dsd, the
Business and Support Services Dsd on a Daily Basis, On an Hourly Basis,
We Have to Adjust What We Do and Really Stay Focused on What Their
Agenda Are, What Their Timetables Are and What Their Priorities Are, and
If We Can Do That, Then We Know That on a Daily Basis We Are Focused on
The Right Things and We Are Supporting Those People Directly. Secondly,
We Are Taking a Look At the State Level at Reexamining Almost on a Daily
Basis How We Address These Initiatives, How We Address the New Platform,
How We Address the New Deployment of the Nt Desktops and How We Manage
That And We\'re Focusing on These Tools like Tivoli to Make That Job Not
for Us into Red Line, Not to Put into Us Overdrive in Terms of Our
Workload. We\'re Also Focusing on the Organization and Shifting the
Organization, the Personnel, to Flex with Those Tools Changes as Well.
You Say Multiple Hats. You\'re Right, We Have Multiple Hats in the Field
and in the State Office. I Look at That as a Flexibility With the
Organization and Gives Us a Freedom to Address Things In a Different
Sort Every Way by Being Able to Shift Between Those Responsibilities.
The Last Thing to Point out Is Talking about Where the Rubber Meets the
Road with Us as a Support Service in IRM, and Where That Rubber Meets
the Road Is in Accomplishment of Workload Measures and Performance
Measures. If What I Do as a Support Service Directly Impacts What Those
Resource Programs and All Of the Programs That We Support Across the
State Do in Terms of Accomplishment of Those Workload Measures, it
Increases Their Ability to Get More Funding, to Be Competitive at the
National Level with Getting Funding. They Come Back with More Money.
Myself as a Support Service Gains Momentum, and We Pick up Speed and
Start to Get Ahead of The Curve as Opposed to Being Behind the Curve and
Being Reactive All the Time, Start to Think Forward. So I Just Wanted to
Same I Think We Can Accomplish the Goals That You\'ve Detailed in IRM
2000 and I Think We Can Accomplish Them At Each Level, at Washington,
National Centers, the State and Field Offices and Interagency as Well,
and We Can Do it Best If We Do it as Partners, and Our Success Rate Is
Going to Be Much Higher If We Do it in That Way. So Thanks Again for
Leting Me Have the Chance to Comment.

Stoebe: Thank You, Chris. Appreciate You Being Here and Taking the Time
and the Courage To Come on this Show. And Thank You, Tip, for Your
Candid Comments and Your Time And We Appreciate That, and I Speak for
All of Us. I\'m Sure We\'re All Looking Forward to Working Closer with
You as We Go down Through the Rest of this Year and next Year. We Would
like to Take ‑‑ at this Point We\'re Going to Take a 15‑minute Break and
We Would Like to Again Thank Both of You Guys for Helping Us out Here.
When We Get Back, We\'ll Give You An Update on Some of BLM\'s Year 2000
Compliance Activities. Stay Tuned. There\'s a Lot More Coming up and We
Will See You in a Few Minutes.

Stoebe: Welcome Back to the IRM Forum. Joining Me Now for Our Year 2000
Discussion Is Terry Brokovich. Welcome, Terry.

Brokovich: It\'s Good to Be Here. With 43 Days, 13 Hours and I Believe
It\'s 25 Minutes, Not to Be Exact, Left in the Year in 1999, Waiting for
the Millennium, It\'s a Pretty Stressful Time and It\'s an Exciting Time
and We Hope Today The Panel and We Can Share Some Of Our Successes and
Alert People of Maybe What\'s to Look Forward to in the Future.

Stoebe: Good. Also Joining Us Is Rick Selbach, Arizona\'s Y2k Technical
Lead. Greetings, Rick. We Appreciate You Taking the Time to Give a State
Perspective On Y2k Preparations.

Selbach: We\'ve Done a Loft Y2k Work this Year in Preparation for \"Day
One\" and We\'re Looking Forward to a Smooth Tran into the New
Millennium.

Stoebe: Also with Us Is Don Bradley from the Brad Sun Corporation. His
Company Has Been Assisting BLM with the Y2k Compliance Work And
Completing the National Continuity of Operations Planning. Thank You,
Don.

Bradley: It\'s a Pleasure to Be Here from Barbara David. Brad Sun Has
Been Helping Barbara Prepare Bureauwide Continuity of Operation Plans
That Basically Ensure the Bureau Has the Ability to Operate under A
Variety of Emergency Conditions and \"Day One\" Offers Particular
Interest and Particular Opportunities for Continuity of Operation
Planning.

Stoebe: and Completing the Panel Is BLM\'s Chief Law Enforcement Officer
Walt Johnson. Walt, with So Much Y2k Emphasis On Computer Software and
Embedded Chips, it Seems a Lot Of People Haven\'t Been Thinking About
the Law Enforcement Aspects of Y2k.

Johnson: Well, Thank You for Inviting Me Today to Join You on Ntc Tv.
It\'s Kind of Exciting as We Look At What Comes in the Future, the
Cooperation We\'ve Had and in Particular I Think We Can Add a Different
Dimension Today with Law Enforce Ment and Security Being Add to Do this
Forum.

Stoebe: Good. Terry, Why Don\'t You Begin with An Update on the Status
of Our Compliance Efforts and Contingency Planning.

Brokovich: Ok, Robin. Thank You. But Before We Begin, on Behalf Of the
Y2k Executive Bob Doyle And Myself, I Want to Take this Opportunity to
Personally Thank All of the Bureau Y2k Activity Leads. Bill Hager for
Information Technology, Barbara David for The Embedded Chip Technology
and Continuity of Operations, Kin Wilbert from Telecommunications And
Gary Stuckey for the Legacy Rehost 2000, for All Their Hard Work and
Dedication. In Addition to the Bureau\'s Activity Leads, a Big Thank You
Should Go out to All the State And Center Y2k Points of Contact As Well
as the Technical Leads. The Job These Individuals Have Done in Preparing
the Bureau for Y2k Has Been Outstanding. The Bureau Has Had Several
Successes in Y2k Such as We Prepared a Very Successful Global
Positioning System Rollover on August 21st, 1999. We Had No
Unanticipated Problems That Occurred. We Have Tested All 12
Mission‑critical Systems, as Well as All 16 Mission‑essential Facilities
on the Critical Date Of 9/9/99 with No Glitches at All. We Also
Developed the State and Centers Developed Specific Spending Plans
Resulting in the Bureau Receiving \$12 Million in Supplemental Funding
from Omb. Currently We Have Spent \$11.7 Million of That \$12 Million,
but The Hard Work That People Have Done out in the Field Has
Successfully Got Us That \$12 Million. We Also Had the Director Sign The
Certification Letter to the Secretary of Interior Stating That the
Bureau Is Y2k Compliant On September 30th, 1999. And Most Recently, the
Bureau Has Received an Outstanding Evaluation Rating of the ‑‑ for The
Y2k Command Center by Doi And the National Park Service on The November
4th, 1999. Today I\'d like to Briefly Go Over Some of the Overview of
What We\'re Going to Be Talking About on ‑‑ for \"Day One\" and Y2k.
First of All, I Would like to Go Into a Definition of Y2k ‑‑ Excuse Me,
of \"Day One.\" Why We Plan for \"Day One.\" How Does the Bureau Fit
into the Overall Picture of \"Day One\"? And Also, What Have We Done to
Prepare for the \"Day One\"? And What Really Needs to Be Done Next?
First of All, I Would like to Go Over a Definition of \"Day One.\" When
We Talk about \"Day One,\" We Talk about the Period Between December
31st, 1999, and January 3rd, 2000, Close of Business on That Date. The
Reason I Really Want to Make Sure That Everybody Understands What the
Definition of \"Day One\" Means, There\'s a Lot of Definitions Flying
Around, but For this Forum, We Would like to Settle on this Definition.
Also, It\'s for the Various Organizations to Monitor and Respond to
Various Situations That Might Arise as a Result of The Year Changing
from 1999 to 2000. And Also the Definition Is to Report Any Status or
Report Status of Facilities and System Using a Very Rehearsed
Predetermined Reporting Process. First of All, We Would like to Talk
about Why Plan for \"Day One.\" First of All, It\'s Going to Prepare the
Bureau in Handling Of Problems Created by Possible Rollover Date
Malfunction. In the Areas That We like to Concentrate on Right Now Are
the Mission‑critical Systems, Telecommunications and Embedded Chips.
First of All, in the Mission‑critical Systems, We Have 12
Mission‑critical Systems That Have Been Identified to the Department of
Interior and Also To Omb. They Have Been Modified and We Have Had an
Independent Contractor Has Verified and Validated That Those Systems Are
Y2k Compliant and We Are Ready To Go. Also Those 12 Systems Have Had
Written Contingency Plans Just In Case We Do Have a Malfunction, in
Other Words, We Have Contingency Plans of What We\'re Going to Do in
Case of a Malfunction. In the Telecommunications Arena, We Have over
17,000 Components Were Inventoried and Identified As Y2k Compliant. To
Be Specific, I Think it Was 17,198. But I Don\'t like to Throw out The
Exact Number. So I Just Say over 17,000. Such Items That Had Been
Inventoried and Verified Have Been the Local Area Network Hubs, Network
Firewalls, Voice Mail, the Pbx System, Telephone Systems, the
Communications Routers, Network Monitoring, Network Access, Firewalls,
et Cetera. In the Embedded Chip Arena, There\'s Countless, Thousands and
Thousands of Embedded Chips in Such Things As, I Stated Before, Was the
Global Positioning Systems, Building Security Systems, How Do You Get
into This ‑‑ into ‑‑ Building Entry Systems, Card Key Systems, Fire
Suppression Detection Systems, Heating and Ventilation Systems, Believe
it or Not, in Some Cases We Were Not Y2k Compliant and We Had to
Renovate Them or They Would Not Have Had Heat and Cooling. Lights in
Some Cases. All Have Been Inventoried, Renovated and We\'re Ready to Go
To the Best of Our Abilities. The Second Area of Why Plan for \"Day
One\" Is to Prepare the Bureau in Dealing with Any Issues That Might
Come up During \"Day One.\" One Such Area Is the Law Enforcement Arena.
As You Say Today, We\'ve Met Walt Johnson. Walt Is Our Chief Law
Enforcement Officer. Walt Is Going to Be at the Command Center with
Myself and Quite a Few Other People, and We Welcome Walt and the Law
Enforcement Arena into Our Fold And We\'re Looking Forward to Working
with Him. We\'ve Had a Good Time So Far With Him, And, Walt, I\'d like
to Just Take this Opportunity To, You Know, Let Us Know What\'s
Happening on the Law Enforcement Side for \"Day One.\"

Johnson: Well, Terry, It\'s Good to Be Here this Morning. You and Others
Have Been Working Very Hard to Develop an Excellent Framework That We
Can All Work Within as We Work Towards Any Challenges the BLM May Face
in the Transition into The New Year. BLM Law Enforcement Itself Has Been
Working Very Hard in Partnership with IRM and Continuity of Operations.
As the Chief of Law Enforcement, I\'m Here Today to Discuss Some
Potential Challenges We Face in The Transition and Throughout The Year
2000. As the Year 2000 Approaches, We In BLM Law Enforcement Tine ‑‑
Continue to Cooperate with the Fbi and Other Law Enforcement Agencies to
Obtain Information About Any Events Which Could Potentially Affect the
Operations and Security of the BLM and its Employees. My Presentation
Today Is Based On \"Project Meggido,\" Which Is The Fbi Analysis of
Extremist Activities in the United States By Individuals or Domestic
Extremist Groups Who Profess an Apocalyptic View of the You Millennium
or Attach Some Special Significance to the Year 2000. The Project Is a
Culmination of The Fbi Initiating Their Analysis with Their Field
Offices, Legal Attaches and the Fbi Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit. My
Comments Today and I Want to Note this for Anybody, They Are In No Way
Designed to Be Critical of Any Individuals\' Religious Beliefs or to
Infringe Upon Their Rights under the First Amendment to Express Those
Beliefs. In That Particular, \"Project Megiddo\" Itself Provides a ‑‑
For Law Enforcement Agencies a Clear Picture of Potential Extremism
Motivated by the next Millennium. For Many, the Millennium Holds Special
Significance, and as This Pivotal Point in Time Approaches, the Impetus
for the Initiation of Violence Becomes More Acute. Several Religiously
Motivated Groups Envision a Quick Fiery Ending in an Apocalyptic
Particular Battle While Others May Initiate a Sustained Campaign of
Terrorism in the United States to Prevent the \"New World Order.\" Armed
with the Urgency of the Millennium as a Motivating Factor, New
Clandestine Groups May Conceivably Form to Engage In Violence Against
the United States or its Citizens and the Government. The Term Megiddo
Comes from the Hebrew Har Megiddon and the Greek Transliteration Is
Simply Armageddon, Which Is the Biblical Setting of God\'s Final And
Conclusive Battle Against Evil. The Fbi Has Determined There Exists a
Moderate Threat of Domestic Millennial Terrorism. That Is to Say It\'s
Just as Likely to Occur as Not. I Want to Repeat. It\'s Just as Likely
to Occur as Not. Any Likely Domestic Terrorist Actions Associated with
the Millennium Could Be Carried out With Those with Racist, Religious
Beliefs or Those with The Apocalyptic Views Such as Armageddon Is Coming
or Those With \"New World Order\" Theory. Terrorists May Use Violence as
a Purposeful Action Aimed as Initiating a Violent Confrontation with Law
Enforcement and Such Violence Would Be Designed to Start Armageddon or a
Race War or to Fight the New World Order. Many of These Individuals Are
Groups Believe the Bible Justifies Their Violence Against Violators of
God\'s Laws. This Includes but Is Not Limited To Actions Against
Minorities, The Federal Government, Our Financial Systems and Abortion.
To Many, Death in Battle Is Salvation. Within Religious Ideologies, the
Millennial Threat Comes from Those Who Believe in Armageddon Are and Are
Preparing for the Battle, Who Believe in a Race War and Who Believe Y2k
Problems Will Be a Catalyst for Actions Against Them. Some Believe We
Are Now on the Verge Avenue World Order, as Such They Believe the United
Nations Will Lead an Armed Takeover of the United States to Form a
One‑world Government. Their Motivating Factors Include, First, the
Constitution. While All of Us Love the Constitution, These People Are
Particularly Concerned with Preserving it at All Costs. Secondly,
They\'re Concerned About Federal Land Management. They\'re Especially
Focused and Concerned about the Restriction Of Land Use. Thirdly,
They\'re Concerned about Gun Control. They Believe Confiscation of
Firearms Is Inevitable. Fourth, Taxes, They Don\'t Like. Last Think,
Events Such as Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Freeman Standoff Are Significant
Events They Call Attention To. Those with the \"New World Order\" Theory
Believe There Will Be Y2k Computer Problems Leading to Widespread Chaos
with Martial Law Being Declared and Finally a Takeover Being Declared by
United Nations Troops. As Stated Earlier, These Events Are Just as
Likely to Occur as Not. I Really Don\'t Want to Scare Anyone with My
Comments. This Information Is Being Given To You So That You Will Be
Informed and So That You Will Be Prepared. To Date the Fbi Has Not
Identified BLM as a Particular Target or a Specific Target. However, We
must Not Take Any Unnecessary Risks. It\'s Not a Time to Overreact,
Either and These Are Extremist Views. They Are Not Mainstream Thinking.
And We Are Preparing. By Being Prepared, We Hope to Avoid Problems.
Frankly, of Late, My Motto Is \"Preparation, Not Paranoia.\" Our Law
Enforcement Officers, as I Said, Are Working with the Fbi And Other Law
Enforcement Agencies. Where Necessary Appropriate Action Will Be Taken
to Protect The BLM and its Employees. We\'ll Continue to Work with Those
Assigned to Y2k and \"Day One\" Preparations. Throughout the Transition
into The New Year, BLM Law Enforcement Officers Will Be Working. Take
Your Lead from Them. They Are Professional Officers And They Are There
to Serve and Protect You. The National Law Enforcement Office Will Be
Represented as Terry Has Said in the BLM National Command Center in
Washington, D.c.. And We Will Maintain Our 24‑hour Duty Officer in
Boise. At the State Office Level, Your Special Agents‑in‑charge Will Be
Available Should There Be Any Incident Related to the Millennium Which
Requires Law Enforcement Response, We Want to Know about it at the
National Command Center. While Any One Incident May Not Seem
Significant, Taken as a Whole, an Event May Be Unfolding. Please Keep Us
Informed as Possible and We Will Do the Same With You. I Want to Call
Your Attention Now to Our Guide for Reporting Serious Law Enforcement
Incidents. This Is What Your Law Enforcement Officers Use for Reporting
Law Enforcement Incidents. It Contains Authorities, Roles And
Responsibilities, Listing of Incidents Requiring Reports, Procedures and
a Sample Significant Activity Report. Our Officers Are Well Versed and
Experienced in its Use. It Is Tried and Tested. It Works. Use It. If We
Have Law Enforcement Incidents, Rely on Your Officers. Do Not Hesitate
to Call Them. Should Any Criminal Act Be Committed Against the BLM or
its Employees, BLM Law Enforcement Officers must Be Notified and Will
Take the Lead. As Necessary, They Will Notify Other Law Enforcement
Agencies And Make the Necessary BLM Notifications. Please Keep in Mind
That Any Single Incident May Require Multiple Reports, Such as a Report
Within the Established \"Day One\" Processes and a Law Enforcement
Report. Depending on the Act, Criminal Violations May Well Activate
Continuity of Operations Plans At Any or All Levels of the BLM. We Could
Have Our \"Day One\" Command Centers, Law Enforcement Operations and
Continuity of Operations Running Simultaneously. Each of These Has Their
Own Processes And, Therefore, it Will Be Essential That We Effectively
Communicate and Tine Cooperate. I Appreciate the Chance to Be Here.

Stoebe: Thank You, Walt.

Brokovich: I Appreciate You Being Here. Thank You for All Your Comments.
Today Also in ‑‑ in Why Should The Bureau Plan for \"Day One\" Is In the
Area of Health, Life and Safety, or Continuity of Operations Planning.
And Today We Have with Us Don Bradley as We Introduced Earlier From the
Bradson Corporation Who Assisted in the Development of The Plans. Don,
Would You Please Explain How the Continuity of Operations Plans Fit into
the \"Day One\" Program and What You Have Done To Date?

Bradley: Sure. Continuity of Operation Plans Basically Are the Bureau\'s
Plans For Dealing with Emergency Situations That Would Otherwise Prevent
it from Completing its Mission Essential Activities and Functions.
Mission Essential Activities and Functions Are Those Things Required to
Protect the Life, Safety and Health of Employees. They\'re Also Those
Actions Required to Fulfill the Government\'s Legal ‑‑ to Protect The
Government\'s Legal and Financial Positions with the Public. Now, as
Walt Has Described It, There Are Several Risks That May Prevent ‑‑ May
Occur or Be Part Of this ‑‑ Part of the Change Through the New
Millennium That Could Actually Implement the Continuity of Operation
Plan. This Situation That We\'re Talking about from a \"Day One\"
Perspective, However, Is No Different than Any Other Issues That the
\"Day One\" ‑‑ That the Continuity of Operation Plan May Be Responding
To. They\'re All Developed with Teams At the Various State Offices and
Field Offices and They Begin With the Basic Threat and Risk Assessment.
They Take a Look at the Risk That the Program May Be Subjected to and in
the Process Of Doing That, Folks Identify What Appropriate Mitigation
Strategies Are. They Take Those Strategies, They Assign Responsibilities
to Folks. They Create an Emergency Organizational Structure So That If
Something Does Happen the Folks Know Who it Is That\'s Going to Be
Making Decisions, Who Is Going to Be Involved, Perhaps Where They\'re
Going to Meet, Includes Things like Success Planning. What Happens If
the Director Is Not Available, Either Because He Is out of Town During
the Incident or Heaven Forbid He Has Been Directly Impacted by the
Incident and Is Not Available to Fulfill His or Her Usual
Responsibilities? Relocation Sites. Relocation Site in and of Itself Is
Not Good Enough If You Don\'t Have the Equipment and the Records and the
Documentation There to Do Your Job. So the Continuity of Operation Plan
Includes Those Elements in There. They Include Communication Plans. How
Do You Get Ahold of Employees? How Do You Get Ahold of the Leadership
and the Key Decision Makers in an Organization to Get Them Involved? How
Do You Notify the Public? The Washington Office? Who Does That? What\'s
the Telephone Number? Exactly What Type of Information Ought You to Be
Providing? What\'s the Role of Public Affairs? Again, All of this Stuff
Is in a Good Continuity of Operation Plan. Also Included Are Training
and Exercise Requirements. Now, as Terry\'s Going to Talk About in a Few
Minutes, Numerous Exercises Have Been Conducted Based on \"Day One\"
Related Issues. Some of Those Situations May Require the Organization to
Implement its Continuity of Operation Plan. For Example, If There Were a
Fire in the Building and the Facility Had to Relocate, the Procedure for
Doing That Is Described in the Continuity of Operation Plan. Continuity
of Operation Plans Also Include Procedural Guides For like the Personnel
Area, the Financial Management and the Resource Area So That Everybody
Knows What Their Responsibilities Are in an Emergency Situation. So,
Although We Happen to Be Focusing on \"Day One\" Related And Year 2000
Related Issues, The Truth Is the Continuity of Operation Plan Was
Developed for A Broad Range of Issues and Is Intended to and Designed to
Respond to All of Those. Now, Specifically on \"Day One,\" You Got a Set
of Situations That Are Considered in Most Plans, The Utilities Issues,
the Heating and Air Conditioning That Terry Talked about Earlier,
Elevators That May or May Not Work and Would Basically Perhaps Prevent
the Public from Getting To Your Location If You Happened To Be Located
in a High‑rise. Security Systems, How Do You Know That the Building Is
Properly Secured? A Lot of Them Automatically Turn Themselves on and off
So That Basically They Can Prevent Entry To the Building Except to a
Limited Number of Personnel on Weekends. Well, with a Noncompliant
System, it May Be That Your Building Is Wide Open on Saturday or Sunday.
It Also May Be That You Come Into Work and Your Card Does Not Work You
and All of a Sudden Can\'t Get into the Building, in Which Case You Will
Have to Refer to the Good Ol\' Manual Key System. Information Systems
May Not Work. Again, Most Continuity of Operation Plans Identify How a
Business Process Would Be Done In the Absence of an Information System.
In General, Though, in the Absence of a Year 2000 Issue, People Think in
Terms of the Failure of the Local Area Network or Failure of the Wide
Area Network. A Year 2000 Issue Could Be Any Of Those plus Even More
Important, an Absolute Software Failure, a System That Does Not Work
Because There Is a Date Algorithm Number There That All Of a Sudden
Doesn\'t Know What to Do with the 00 in the Year 2000. So You Have an
Issue of Maybe The System Failing and from Our Perspective, You Also
Have the Issue of a System That Appears To Work Yet Is Producing
Incorrect Data. So Either Way, the System ‑‑ the Program Is Not Being
Supported By the Information System as it Ordinarily Would That. So it
May Be Necessary to Implement Elements of the Planning Process to Ensure
That That Function That Is Ordinarily Supported by a Failed System Is,
In Fact, Fulfilled. Maybe These Are Manual Processes. It May Be That
Certain Processes Functions Can Be Set Aside for a Week or Two While the
IRM Community Attempts to Reestablish Y2k Compliance. But the Important
Thing Is That These Clues Describe the Process To Deal with the Failure
of All Of These Systems and Programs People Have Grown to Depend On.
Bottom Line Is That the Coo May Get Exercised. It\'s Important That
People Have The Ability to Exercise Their Coo If it Happens, but
Hopefully, You Know, When We Get To January 3rd, the End of the \"Day
One\" Planning Period, Everybody Will Have Said, \"Well, We Don\'t Have
to Worry about it Again.\"

Stoebe: Walt, Did You Have Something to Add?

Johnson: Robin, this Is Where It\'s So Critical That We\'re Working
Together, and It\'s Why Today Is So Valuable. We\'ve Really Worked Hard
with Terry, Others, with Bradson, With the Folks in Continuity of
Operations and It\'s So Vital That We Merge These Issues, Yet We
Remember at the Same Time There May Be Some Things That Require Multiple
Reports and I Know as Don Has Counseled with Us and Given Us Excellent
Advice, it May Take Some Patience Working with Each Other. To Blend
Together in That Greater BLM Family to Make a Lot Of These Things Happen
and to Run Smoothly. So I, for One, I Have to Say It\'s So Vitally
Important We Do These Things and We\'re Counting On Everybody Throughout
to Do That.

Brokovich: Thank You, Don. The next Area I Would like to Illustrate Is
How Does BLM Fit Into the Overall \"Day One\" Picture? \"Day One\" and
Our Facility Are ‑‑ Our Y2k National Command Center Is Not a BLM, How
Should I Say, Invention. This Is a Coordination All the Way down up to
the White House. They Have the Information Coordination Center, Which
Just Actually Was Revealed to the Media Last Monday. They Took the Media
Through and ‑‑ to Show off Their \"Day One\" ‑‑ Their Command Center,
Their Coordination Center. The Price Tag on it Was Kind of Staggering,
But, You Know, They ‑‑ They Have ‑‑ They Want to Know Exactly What
Happens, When It Happens All over the World. From the White House
Information Coordination Center, We Have the Doi Y2k Command Center,
Which The National Command Center, Which Is Going to Be Located in
Washington, D.c. Reports Directly up to the Y2k ‑‑ the Doi Command
Center. So this Is the Overall Picture Of Where We Sit as Our
Organization. Some of the Expectations from The Department of Interior
That Have Been Put Put All Agencies As Well as BLM, First of All Is
Construction of a Command Center. They Want Summary Reports on Mission
Critical Systems, Which We Have 12 Of. They Want Summary Reports
Regarding Status of Mission Essential Facilities, Which We Have
Identified 16 Of. Problem Reports. Affect the Mission Critical Systems,
Mission Essential Facilities, Anything Where Life, Health or Safety and
Any Essential Business Functions, And the Essential Business Functions
Have Been Identified By the Facilities, Telephone, Card Key Entries,
Anything That They Deemed Was Mission Essential. Today, as We Said
Earlier, We Have Rick Selbach of the Y2k Technical Lead from the State
of Arizona and He Will ‑‑ I Would Like to Have Him Address from a Field
Perspective of What BLM Has Done to Prepare for \"Day One\" from a Field
Perspective.

Selbach: Thanks, Terry. From the National Level Down, All the Way to the
Field Offices, Have Been Preparing for \"Day One.\" On the National
Level, Based Upon Guidance from the Department, the Bureau Has Actually
Defined the Structure For \"Day One\" Reporting and I Will He Expand on
That in Just a Moment. As Terry Mentioned, BLM Has Established a
National BLM Command Center. And as Well as Alternate Command Centers in
Case of Unexpected Emergencies. This National Command Center Has Issued
Reporting Requirements to The States and Centers, in Other Words, it
Tells Them What Types Of Things Need to Be Reported on And When. These
Reporting Requirements Are Clearly Laid out in the Guidance Materials at
the National Command Center Has Provided to The States and Centers, Such
as The \"Day One\" Policy and the National \"Day One\" Plan. BLM Has
Also Developed and Participated in Various \"Day One\" Exercises Which
Don Has Allude to Do, and That Was Really to Test the Effectiveness Of
the Existing Continuity of Operations Plans and the Contingency Plans
and Terry Will Be Discussing These Exercises in A Few Minutes. Now, on a
More Local Level, Each Of the States and Senators Has Established Their
Own \"Day One\" Command Center and Have Prepared A \"Day One\" Planned a
\"Day One\" Plan Specify Tyke Their State or Center. Again, These Plans
State Who Will Man the Center and When the Various Reports Will Be Do.
Speaking of Reports, Let Me Describe the BLM Reporting Structure. As Can
You See on this Slide, Each of the Various Field Offices Report to Their
Respective State Office Command Center. The State Office Command
Centers, as Well as the National Centers, Report to the National BLM
Command Center in Washington, or in Case of Emergency, That Would Be to
the Alternate Command Center in the National IRM Center in Denver.
Terry\'s Previous Slide Showed That the National BLM Command Center
Reports to the Department Command Center, and That the Department
Command Center Reports to the White House\'s Icc, the Information
Coordination Center. Terry, since I Mentioned the BLM National Command
Center, Could You Provide Us More Specifics on That?

Brokovich: Sure. The Location of the National Commend Center Is at the
Main Interior Building in Washington, D.c.. We\'ve Confiscated the
Director\'s Conference Room and Thank You, Tom, for Leting Us Use It,
for All the Exercises and Also for \"Day One,\" and Our Staffs Will Be
Manning That 12 Hours ‑‑ in 12‑hour Shifts for Three ‑‑ Almost Four
Days. The Telephone Numbers Have Been Published and All the Y2k Points
Of Contact at Your Respective States and Centers Have the Telephone
Numbers of the National Command Centers. So, You Know, If an Employee,
For Instance, Needs to Get Ahold Of Somebody at Their Facility And They
Cannot, They Do Have Alternate Numbers That Will Be Published Through
Their Points Of Contact, but If All Else Fails, They Can Call the
Washington, D.c. Command Center And Get Through That Way. The Alternate
Command Center, as Was Stated, Is Located in Denver, Colorado, at the
National IRM Center. In Case There Is a Problem and It Has to ‑‑ the
Command Center Has to Move Operations, We Are Going to Move the
Operation to The Alternate Command Center. And Also During Our
Exercises, We Found out That in Case Of, For Instance, a Snowstorm in
Denver, Colorado, as Well as Something Happening in Washington, D.c.
Simultaneously, We\'ve Also Adopted a Third‑tier Contingency Plan That
We Would Be Relocating to the \"L\" Street Office in Washington D.c.
Some of the Resources We Have in The Facility, as I Said, Earlier, We
Have Four Telephone Lines Completely External to the Gsa Telephone
Switch Inside the Main Interior Building. They Are Commercial
Outsidelines. One Number Will Roll over to the Other Four. We Have Pcs.
We Have Established E‑mail Accounts for the Y2k Command Center. And as
Well as All the Mission Essential Facilities Have Established the ‑‑ an
E‑mail Account. We Have Cable Tv for News Updates. We Will Be Following
the News, You Know, as it Comes Across the New Zealand and the
International Dateline. Currently We Have 9 Staff Members at the
National Center. These Members Have All Volunteered. I Don\'t Know If I
Volunteered or Not. I\'m Not Sure. Anyway, Bob Doyle Is Also on the
Staff. He\'s the Y2k Executive, Will Be Taking Some Shifts. We Are in
for the Long Weekends, 12‑hour Shifts, as I Said. The Number of
Personnel, Though, At the Mission Essential Facilities, Wave\' Left it
up to The Mission Essential Facilities To Determine Who and How Many
People They Are Going to Require To Come In, Not Specifically at
Midnight, but on the Actual \"Day One,\" on January 1st, to Test Their
Facility to Check and Make Sure That It\'s Safe for the People to Come
In, You Know, and That Monday Morning They Can Come in And, A, Get in
the Building, B, They Have Heat, Lights, et Cetera. Some of the Command
Center Requirements, Just to Note, this Is from a BLM National
Perspective. On December 31st, We Will Be Manning the Center Starting
Most Likely at 5:00 in the Evening, Or Afternoon. At 6:00 We Have a
Department of Interior Briefing at the Main Interior Building. And Then
We Have at 9:00 at Night, We Have a Roll Call to The Doi Command Center.
Then on the 1st of January, 2000, at 4:00 in the Morning, We Have a Roll
Call Again to the Doi Command Center. I Think They Put That One in There
to Make Sure We Were Awake, I Guess, or Alert. And by Noon Eastern
Standard Time, We Are to Submit from the Bureau to the Department Any ‑‑
The Mission Critical System Summary Report and Also the Mission
Essential Facility Summary Report. Then on January 3rd ‑‑ and If Any
Problems Occur in Between There, We Are Supposed to Be Reporting on an
Every Six‑hour Basis on the Status of That Problem. In the Center We
Have Tote Boards, Status Boards, Which We Can Make ‑‑ Will Be Keeping a
Running Total of Problems, a Running Log of Events That Happen
Throughout \"Day One\" and We Will Be Sharing That with the Rest of the
Mission Essential Facilities as Well as the National Doi Command Center.
As I Say, If Everything Goes Well, Which I Believe it Will, On January
3rd, Close of Business, We Will Shut down the Command Center and
Continue on With Business. At this Time I Would like to Have ‑‑ Rick,
Why Don\'t You Talk About the Mission Essential Facilities since You Are
One and You Are Going to Be Manning the Command Center Here along with
The ‑‑ Some of Your Other Staff Members. Talk about the Mission
Essential Facilities and the National Center Requirements.

Selbach: All Right. Thank Goodness That We Don\'t Have to Man the Three
Days, the Mission Essential Facilities. We Will Be Here the Morning of
The First, Bright and Early, but Our First Requirement Is on January 1st
by 10:00 A.m. Eastern Standard Time Each State And Center Will Call into
the National Command Center to Report That the Local Command Center Has
Been Manned. That\'s Basically Just a Roll Call. Then by 11:00 A.m.
Eastern Standard Time, All the States And Centers Are to Submit a
Mission Essential Facility Status Report. It Might Be Good If I Tell You
Which Are the Mission Essential Facilities. Those Would Be the 12 State
Offices, the Alaska Fire Center, The National Interagency Fire Center,
the National Business Center and the Washington Office. In Addition to
Those States and Centers That Have ‑‑ Any State Or Center That Has
Either a Mission Critical System, Has Lead on a Mission Critical System,
or a Lead on a Mission Essential System. Mission Critical like the
National IRM Center with the Legacy Rehost 2000 or a Mission Essential
System Such as Arizona Has the Recreation Management Information System
or Oregon Has The Timber Sale Information System. They Have to Actually
Submit a Summary Report for Those Systems. But, of Course, That\'s Not
the End of \"Day One\" Reporting. As the next Slide Shows, We Do Have
Requirements for Day Two And Three. On January 2nd, by 11:00 A.m., The
States and Centers must ConfIRM the Operational Status Of Their Mission
Essential Facility. In Other Words, Any Mission Essential Facility That
Was Not Fully Operationsal by 11:00 A.m. On the First must Report on
Their Operational Status at this Time. Then on January 3rd, Within Four
Hours of Resumption of the Business Day, Offices must Submit a Mission
Critical Summary Report and Any Problem Reports. Besides the Mission
Essential Facilities, the Various Field Offices Also Have Reporting
Requirements. The Only Reporting Requirements For the Field Offices Is
on January 1 by 6:00 P.m. Eastern Standard Time All the Field Offices
must Report to Their State Office the Status of Their Facility as it
Relates to Systems and Equipment as Relating to Life, Health, Safety And
Essential Business Functions. I Mentioned the Problem Reports. I Should
Probably Talk about That for a Moment. A Problem Report Is Just What it
Sounds Like. It Identifies a System or a Component That Has Some Sort of
A Y2k Problem. Problem Reports Are to Be Filed Whenever a Problem
Occurs. Within the \"Day One\" Period. In Addition, the Report Is
Supposed to Be Updated Every Six Hours or until the Problem Is Resolved.
Problem Reports Are to Be Submitted for All Mission Critical Systems,
All Mission Essential Systems and All Telecommunications Equipment and
Equipment with Embedded Microhips or Other Systems That Affect
Functions.

Brokovich: I Would like to Go Back, Rick, and Ask You One Question. The
Question I Guess That Would Come up Is from the Field Office
Requirements, We Say by 6:00 Eastern Standard Time. Can a Field Office
Actually Report to You Earlier?

Selbach: Actually, in Arizona We\'re Actually Providing Our Own Guidance
to Field Offices and We Would like to Have Them by Noon, Which Would Be
2:00 Eastern Standard Time Because We\'ll Be Manning Our Command Center
Much Earlier in the Day, and Yeah, We Don\'t Want Our Field Offices to
Have to Get up Really Early to Make Sure That the Power Is on And Do a
Basic Facility Check, But We Would like to Have it a Little Bit Earlier
in the Day. So like for Arizona We\'re Requesting That Our Field Offices
Do it by Noon.

Brokovich: Good. Thank You. You Asked about \"Day One\" Exercises. We
Have Participated in Quite a Few Exercises. We\'ve Had a Departmentwide
Exercise on October 14th Which We Participated In. We Had a BLM

\> Wide Exercise on October 21st and this Is the One That We Called ‑‑

Stoebe: the One When You Tested the Fire Alarm?

Brokovich: That Was the One Where We Tested the Fire Alarm. That Was
Kind of an Exciting Time Where We Had a Fire Alarm Five Minutes or Ten
Minutes Before We Were Supposed to Be Conductying the Test and I Called
the National Center and Asked Them ‑‑ I Basically Informed Them We Have
a Fire Here and Now We Are Moving the Command Center to the National
Center, and We Had a Lot of Lessons Learned That Day, Actually, and it
Went Fairly Smooth. We Did Have a Couple Glitches, But after We Got Back
into the Inner, We ‑‑ Back into the Center, We Became Reengaged into The
Reporting Process. But That Was Kind of an Exciting Time. We Also
Learned on October 21st That We Have Issued out to All The Mission
Essential Facilities And the State Offices Government Emergency
Telephone System Cards Which Are Called Gets Cards. What These Cards Are
Used For, In Case You Get a Busy Circuit, It\'s a Priority Override That
You Can Get Through and Call, For Instance, the Command Center. Some of
the States Ask Their Field Offices to Use Them and We Found During That
Exercise That Some of the Cards Didn\'t Work, And Some of the ‑‑ the
Procedures Weren\'t Clear. But That Has All Been Solved and We Are Now
Using the \"Gets\" Cards on a Trial Basis. I Encourage Them to Continue
Using Those Cards on a Weekly Basis Just to Make a Call, If You\'re on
Travel, Use it for a Quick Call. Just to Make Sure That You Are Used to
‑‑ and Versed on Using That Card. Also on November 4th We Had a White
House Information Coordination Center Exercise Through the Department,
and That Only Involved the National Command Centers from the Bureaus As
Well as Only One or Two Mission Essential Facilities From BLM. Coming
Up, Though, We Have a Very Large Exercise on December 8th and 9th. The
Only Information I Received So Far on this Particular Exercise Is it Is
Going to Be a Top‑to‑bottom Exercise. I Don\'t Know If We Are Going to
Be on Both Days, but I\'ve Been Told We Are Going to Have Both Days
Where We Will Actually Involve Not Only the Mission Essential Facilities
but We Also Will Involve All the Field Offices of the Mission Essential
Facilities, and We Will Also Be Testing the Mission Essential Systems as
Well as the Mission Critical Systems and So We Will Be Doing a Complete
Top to Bottom Exercise on Those Dates. What Has to Be Done Next? Well,
as I Say, We Have 43 Days, You Know, to Go. It\'s Getting to Be Pretty
Stressful. I Know Everybody\'s Worked Very Hard. We\'re Going to
Continue to Participate in the Required Exercises by the ‑‑ with the
Department of Interior and the White House. We Will Continue to Apply
the Lessons Learned from the Exercises and Also the Third Area, Third
Point Here to Cross Train All Personnel Involved, And When I Say Cross
Train the People Involved, into the Command Centers or into the \"Day
One\" and Getting Them Involved In the Continuity of Operations
Planning, Involving the Law Enforcement Staffs, and Making Sure That
Once We Have ‑‑ We Were Actually Going on Through Our Exercises at Our
National Command Center, at First We Were Not Prepared for the Paper
Flow. We Had More Paper Coming Through The Fax Machine on Various
Reportings and the Problems That We Were Simulating That it Was a Real
Lessons Learned Process for Us. We Solved That Problem Also and We\'re
Applying Those Lessons Learned. We Will Continue to Distribute Update
Requirements, as I Say, The White House and the Department Sometimes
They Put Another Requirement in on Us. We Are Changing Various Forms. We
Will Try to Get That Information to You as Soon as We Receive It. In
Closing, as Some of You Know, Between May and September of 1999, the
Bureau Program Office Conducted Some National Validation Reviews for Y2k
Readiness at Most of the State And Center Offices. At That Time it Was
Obvious to The Review Team That the Bureau\'s Y2k Staffs Responsible For
Ensuring Y2k Activities Were Completed. Have Worked Extremely Hard and
In a Professional Manner by Consistently Demonstrating Due Diligence in
Maintaining and Determining Y2k Compliance. The Y2k Documentation
Reviewed At the State Offices, National Centers and the Field Offices
Was Complete and Thorough. The Inventory Information Sampled by the Team
Was Accurate. It Was Evident That the Entire Staffs at the State
Offices, Field Offices and Centers Have Done an Excellent Job in
Preparing for the Year 2000 Transition. Again, Special Recognition and
Thank Yous Should Be Given to The Bureau Activity Leads, the State and
Center Points of Contact and the Technical Leads For Their Dedication
and Competence in Managing a Program Of this Size to a Successful
Completion. The Bureau of Land Management Is Well Positioned to Support
the Y2k Compliance Stat Us and Well Prepared ‑‑ and Will Be Prepared For
Any Future Audits by External Organizations Which We Have Been Informed
Is Going to Happen and the Upcoming \"Day One\" Activities and for the
Year 2000.

Stoebe: Thank You, Terry. That Concludes Our Formal Presentation Oz Y2k
Issues. We Reserved the Rest of the Show To Hear from You. So If You
Have a Question or Comment Regarding Y2k Issues or Anything Else We\'ve
Discussed So Far, Please Give Us a Call or Send Us a Fax. I Do Have a
Couple Notes or Questions I Jotted Down. I Will Start it off While
We\'re Waiting for Anybody to Call or Send in Here. One Is, There\'s an
Issue Paper I Happened to Write Requesting a Waiver on Getting Some of
the Investment Technology Refreshment Pcs Deployed Prior To January
15th, If We\'re Able To Get Them this Month, and I Was Wondering What
the Status on That Was?

Brokovich: Who Was That Directed To?

Stoebe: Directed to You, Terry.

Brokovich: I Thought it Would Be Directed to Me. I Am in Receipt of Your
Request For Waiver. At this Time I\'ve Sent it to the Y2k Executive Bob
Doyle. He Is out of the Office until Next Monday and We Have Discussed
it Briefly and He Wants to Further Discuss it Prior to Approving it or
Disapproving It.

Stoebe: Ok.

Brokovich: I Know That\'s a Nonanswer but about the Best I Can Give You
at this Time.

Stoebe: That\'s Ok. I Thought I Would Put You on the Hot Seat While I
Had the Opportunity.

Brokovich: Appreciate That.

Stoebe: No Problem. We Have Barbara from Washington. Do You Have a
Question for Us? I\'ll Push it Again.

Caller: I Don\'t Have a Question, but I Do Have Some Information for
Terry Brokovich. Terry, You Mentioned a Few Moments Ago That You
Weren\'t ‑‑ Didn\'t Know Whether or Not We Were Going to Have ‑‑ We,
BLM, Was Going to Have to Participate Either One Day or Both Days During
the December Exercise. Departmental Guidance Came out Yesterday That
We\'re Going to Have to Participate for Both Days.

Brokovich: Ok.

Caller: I Just Simply Wanted To Pass it You on to You So That You Could
Alert, since You Have Us All Here as a Captive Audience, You Can Spread
the Word Around.

Brokovich: Ok. Thank You, Barbara. I Appreciate That.

Caller: No Questions, Though. I Just Wanted to Pass the Information.

Brokovich: I Really Appreciate That. So Barbara Has Received from the
Department Information That We Will Be Involved in Both Days of The
Exercise on December 8th and The 9th. So, Please, the Points of Contact
and for All Mission Essential Facilities as Well as Field Offices, Mark
on it Your Calendar.

Caller: Anything Else, Barbara?

Caller: No. That\'s It. Just Wanted to Pass it On, up Dated Information.

Stoebe: Ok. No Faxes Yet, but I Have Question, Terry. Ok. This One Is to
Rick. In Montana We\'re Going Through The Same Drill and I\'m Curious As
to If You Have Identified Who The Specific Individuals at the Field
Office Level Are Going to Be Who Need to Come in January 1st, Check the
Office out and Give You a Call. Have You Got That Done?

Selbach: Actually That\'s a Very Timely Question. We Just Had a
Statewide Business And Support Services Monday Here At the National
Training Center And Basically We Had All the Add Minute Officers Here
and That Was One of the Issues We Talked About, Telling Them this Is
What Is Going to Be Required of You, And We Didn\'t Specifically Say You
Need to Have this Person but Kind of Gave Them the Task and Said, You
Need to Have Someone In, and We Are Going to Be Providing Them a Check
List Of, And ‑‑ First of All, Is it Safe To Go into the Building? Is it
Safe to Travel from Your Home to the Building? You Know, Check for
Power, Check The Phone, Check for Heating, Cooling, Things of That Sort.
So, No, We Haven\'t Specifically Identified Those Yet, but We\'ve Tasked
Our Admin Officers.

Stoebe: You\'re One Step Ahead Of Where I\'m at in Montana. I Have Done
Some Communications With the Field Office Managers But Haven\'t Nailed
Anything down Yet. My Personal Feelings Are Not to Identify IRM People
but Leave it In the Hands of the Managers. Something along the Law
Enforcement Lines That Came up Which I Think Is Timely, Having You Here,
Too, Within the Last Couple Weeks I Had Some of the Relating, Fbi
Reports, Potential Problems Within the Bureau and It Brought to My Level
of Recognition We Need to Have Law Enforcement People Involved as Some
of Individuals That Need to Check out Buildings on \"Day One\" As
Opposed to the Lowest Ranking Member of the Office or Something.

Johnson: Well, We Value All Our Employees. We Want to Make Sure You
Involve Law Enforcement in Each of the Command Centers and Make it a
Center of Responsibility and Entrust Some of That Responsibility to Law
Enforcement. At the Same Time, Let\'s Get the Duties Laid out According
to That Which We\'re Supposed to Do. We Would it a to See Anybody
Inadvertently Walk into a Situation Where They Could Be Harmed. We Are
Not by Any Means Forecasting Any Difficulties but Caution Would Be the
Byword.

Stoebe: I Have One More for You, Terry. You Gave Us a Lot of Time Lines
Of Who Is Doing What When. Something I Have Been Talking to The Folks
from Montana with on Our \"Day One\" Play Is What Should We Communicate
to the Average BLM Employee as to What They Should Be Doing or Not Doing
on January 3rd? In Other Words, If Everything Goes Just Smooth as Silk,
Should They Expect to Come In? Should They Be Called If There Is a
Problem. Part of this Is Implementing a Continuity of Operations Plan. I
Guess I\'m Saying If Everything Goes as Smooth as Possibly Can, Where Do
You See the Average Employee?

If Everything Goes as Smooth As it Can and They Walk in Just Like a
Normal Monday Morning, That I Would ‑‑ I Would Look at Your Organization
to Maybe Call An All‑employees Meeting First Thing in the Morning, You
Know, Let\'s Say Three, Four Hours After the Start of Business, to Just
Bring Them up to Speed of Where We Are, You Know, What Happened over the
Long Weekend, If Any Problems Occurred or What Do They Do If They Find
Any Problems in the next Week or Two Weeks, Because a Lot of Things
We\'ve Solved and We\'ve Renovated For the Actual Switchover at
Midnight, but a Lot of Things We\'re Not Going to Find out Until Maybe a
Week, a Month, Two Months or Three Months down the Line. We Also Have a
Date after the \"Day One,\" Which Is the Leap Year. The Leap Year
Process on February 29th, That\'s Another Critical Date, That We All
Face In the Year 2000, and Likewise, You Know, a Lot of People Talk
About the Actual 1999 and 2000, But the Bigger ‑‑ I\'m Not Going To Say
the Bigger One, but the Other Date Would Be the Actual Date of 2000 and
2001, Which Will Be Another Critical Date. You Know, If Things Don\'t Go
Well at Your Organization, Then Your Continuity of Operations Plans Kick
in That They Are Called and Said to Report at a Specific Location or
Alternate Location and You Have That Structure Set out in Your
Continuity of Operations Plan to Actually Duty Phone Calling.

Stoebe: or Notifying Radio Stations, Tv Stations, et Cetera, If There Is
a Problem.

Brokovich: Whatever Your Coo Says.

Stoebe: Before We Wrap Up, I Would like to Check with the Panel Members
and See If They Have Any Additional Thoughts. Don?

Bradley: Terry Started to Talk about the ‑‑ the Comments On the
Continuity of Operation Planning Issue. It\'s Very Important to Take
this Time to Make Sure That the Telephone Numbers in Your Plan Are
Correct, That You\'ve Got Home Addresses for Key People. If You Have
Subject Matter Experts That May Be Needed During the \"Day One\" Period,
a Special Effort Ought to Be Taken To Make Sure That Information Is
Available. You My May Want to Reconsider What it Is You Need to Do
Before January 1 Gets Here to Prepare Yourself If Systems Fail. If You
Got a Database, for Example, That Has a Register of Activities or a
Register of Documents and It\'s a Critical Piece of Information, You May
Want to Consider Printing That Thing out Prejanuary 1, 2000, Because If
the System Fails, at Least You Have the Paper Record. If it Doesn\'t
Fail, Well, You\'ve Taken down a Tree or Two. But at Least You\'re Ready
to Do Business on the 3rd of January, All Other Things Being Equal. You
Had Made a Comment, Robin, About Should More than IRM People Be
Involved? I Think It\'s Just like with Coo. This Is a Business Issue.
When You\'ve Got Mission Critical Systems, When They\'re Being Evaluated
on January 1st, it Ought to Be Program Folks, Operational People Doing
That. That Shouldn\'t Be the IRM Community out There Looking and
Entering Data into a System Seeing If It\'s Working. It\'s a Program
Issue. They Are the Ones That Are Going To Be Able to Take a Look and
Say, Yes, It\'s Working Correctly. The Last Point Has to the with The
\"Gets\" Card. People May Want to Try to Use The \"Gets\" Card with a
Fax Machine. That\'s All I\'ve Got.

Stoebe: Very Good. Thanks, Don. Rick, How about Some Final Comments from
the State Office Perspective?

Selbach: I Guess What I Would Want to Say Is That We Have Done A Lot of
‑‑ You Know, We\'ve Done Our Inventories, Done Our Testing, Done a Lot
of Things And We\'ve Certified That Our Buildings and Our States Are
Compliant. But We Have a Lot of Vendors out There Who at One Time Had
Said, Yep, this Is Compliant, but All Of a Sudden, They\'re Coming Back
Saying, You Know, That Version Isn\'t Compliant. So I Want to Just Kind
of Reiterate That, the Y2k Process Is Still Ongoing. We\'re Gearing up
for \"Day One,\" But We Still Need to Go Back, And You Still Need to
Make Sure, Especially in Terms of Software, That Compliance ‑‑ You Know,
Those Letters of Compliance from The Vendors, That Those Are Still
Valid. On a Personal Note, I Would like To Thank Terry, Kind of of Thank
Nationally, I Would like to Thank Our State Office and Field Office
Staff. They Have Really Worked Hard. We\'ve Replace Add Lot of
Equipment, Telecommunications, I.t. They\'ve Really Worked Hard and I
Would like to Thank Them for Their Hard Work.

Stoebe: Walt, Any Last Words From Law Enforcement?

Johnson: First Off, It\'s Kind Of Neat to Get a Last Word In. Not
Meaning Necessarily Here. I Will Be Going Home after This. I Do Want to
Say to Everybody Out There, We\'re Not Forecasting Terrible Things. What
You Heard from Me Today Really Is Information Designed To Give You the
Best Information You Can Have. Cooperation Is the Way We\'ve Got To Go
Today. We Are a Small Law Enforcement Organization, but We Need to
Cooperate with Everyone out There, and That Means Everybody That\'s
Watching this Today and Every Other BLMer. I Guess If I Had Anything to
Think about and to Close With, It\'s That We Have Excellent Employees.
We\'ve Got a Great Nation, and Both the Employees and That Nation
Deserve Our Best Effort. Do Your Best out There and We\'ll Be Doing
Ours. So Thank You.

Stoebe: Terry, I\'m Sure You Have a Couple Words Left in Your Repository
You Can Share with Us.

Brokovich: I\'m Not Used to Public Speaking, So I Guess I Can Add a Few
More Words. We Have Really an Exciting Time Here. This Is Something That
We Only Will See, in My Lifetime, Anyway, Going into a New Millennium.
Somebody Said the Other Day, Well, Let\'s Vote Him in on Him Taking over
the Y3k Effort, Well, I Won\'t Be Around for That. The Team That We
Assembled for Y2k from the Leads to the Points Of Contact, All Wait down
to the Field Offices, I Didn\'t Want to Neglect Them at All, Have Done
An Outstanding Job. You Know, When We Went Around With the National
Reviews, We Really Found out What ‑‑ All the Hard Work People Have Done
and The Amount of Documentation. Now, You Know, When We Go Through the
Process of Going Into the next Millennium and the New Year, I Mentioned
about External Organization Auditing The Bureau. We Have Been Informed
That They Will Come in and Actually Look At Our Records and Just Assure
That the Emergency Funding Was Spent for the Actual Renovation And Y2k
Areas. Also Coming up in My ‑‑ on My Scope Is a Visit to the Alternate
Command Center the Week of November 29th. I Will Be Back Home for
Thanksgiving, and I\'ll Be Visiting Their Center and Reviewing Their
Center and Working with Them, and I Am Sure That They Have it All
Together. And Then We Would Prepare for December 8th and 9th. I Believe
on December 7th I Will Be Sending out Notice That I Like to Have a
Points of Contact Conference Call. We Have Been Having Conference Calls
on a Biweekly Basis for The Last Several Months, and I Know They Have
Been Long, but There\'s a Lot of Information That Has to Get out to
These Organizations. So I Want to Thank You, Robin, For You Taking the
Time. It\'s Always Been a Pleasure. This Is My Third One. It\'s Probably
Your Fifth or Sixth or Whatever and People Say We\'re Getting Used to
It. I Don\'t Know What That Means. But I Want to Thank the Panel For
Joining Me. I Appreciate You Taking the Time And I Know You Have Busy
Schedules, and I Really Appreciate It. Thank You.

Stoebe: Thank You, Terry. That about Wraps it up for Our IRM 2000 Forum.
I Would like to Thank Our Studio Panelists for Their Participation and
Especially Thank the BLM Director Tom Fry For Preparing the Remarks for
Us. By like to Remind the Coordinators to Complete the Standard
Broadcast Viewer Roster And Fax it Immediately Following The Show or Use
the Ntc\'s Automated Viewer Reporting System at www.ntc.blm.gov/satnet.
We Hope Today\'s Program Has Given Abetter Understanding of BLM\'s IRM
Program and Our Y2k Preparation Efforts. Thanks for Watching. So Long
from Phoenix.

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