Based largely on self-reported data from member companies, the report showed that only 3 percent of power components tested have required Y2K fixes. NERC president Michael Gent acknowledged, however, that certain power organizations are lagging and will not meet the industry's June 30 deadline for completing Y2K work. The NERC report itself notes that some power distribution systems may not be ready until as late as December 1999. Another area of concern, according to the report, is the Y2K readiness of the telecommunications sector.
Electric systems depend heavily on uninterrupted voice and data communications.
Information on Y2K compliance efforts by the nation's 70,000 water utilities continues to be scanty, according to report released April 27 by the U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem. The report, prepared by the government's General Accounting Office, found many state regulators are not aggressively seeking information about the Y2K status of water utilities. Progress on Wall Street After six weekends of extensive testing, the securities industry reported April 29 that Y2K glitches affected only a small percentage of mock trades. According to the SIA, the carefully scripted trades, designed to simulate transactions among mutual funds, brokerages, investment banks, and clearing houses, revealed a Y2K-related error rate of only 0.02 percent. The tests, involving roughly 400 firms, measured nearly 260,000 steps in thousands of transactions.