Neither manpower nor effort is being set aside for actual testing to verify these statements. All government agencies are not telling the truth. As a result many contingency plans are manpower intensive. Manpower resources may be insufficient to handle multiple, simultaneous failures resulting in inability to fully implement contingency plans and subsequent service outages. Despite the fact that we are in February 1999, some offices are just now beginning to take Y2K as something worthy of management's attention.
Some offices are in the beginning stages of assessment.
Of course, we are reporting that we are 'clean and green' - as the politicians require us to report. I have seen the discussion by the military folks about GPS ground systems, and Japan just pulled back one of its experiments in space due to ground systems problems. Concerted effort to hide deficiencies. Deleting systems from critical list to show greater progress than has actually occurred. There is no real disconnect between what we know and what we report, but there is a strong difference between what we report and what the media and the Congress choose to pass on.