example, reports on y2k surveys of supervisors and regulators being undertaken by the basle committee on banking supervision and by the international organization of securities commissions are planned to be made available on the joint year 2000 council web site. public papers produced by the joint year 2000 council will also be available on the web site. a listing of international conferences and seminars related to y2k will be posted on the web site, together with links to other y2k web sites and documents. at this stage, each member of the joint year 2000 council is in the process of finalizing the country page for its respective country. last week, i wrote to every contact provided by the web pages of the joint year 2000 council can be reached at the web site of the bank for international settlements ( www. bis. org ). these pages will also be registered under the name jy2kcouncil. org in the near future. the four sponsoring organizations ( almost 600 contacts in over 170 countries ), asking for assistance in coordinating the development of their country page. this also provided a further opportunity to raise the awareness of the year 2000 problem at the most senior levels of financial market authorities and supervisors in countries around the world. through the effort to develop this web site and other similar efforts by the joint year 2000 council, i believe we can succeed at keeping the awareness of the issue at a very high level within the global financial supervisory community. efforts to improve preparedness of course, awareness of the year 2000 problem is only the first step in addressing it. global efforts to prepare for year 2000 vary widely, and many countries believe that more coordinated national action will be necessary to tackle the problem as effectively as possible. at our second meeting of the joint year 2000 council, a strong consensus emerged that a national government body in each country could play a helpful role in coordinating preparations for y2k. while the council did not have a strong view on what particular form or what specific authority such a body would require in each specific country, the council members felt strongly that involvement in some fashion by the national government could be beneficial. accordingly, the joint year 2000 council plans to issue a statement in the near future providing general support for the concept of a national - level coordinating body for the y2k problem. in the united states, of course, the white house has established the president ’ s council on year 2000 conversion, headed by john koskinen. this effort, as well as those of this committee under

the leadership of chairman leach, and of the other congressional committees that have addressed the y2k problem, has shown that national government bodies have a very important and useful role to play in encouraging progress in addressing the y2k problem. turning now to the question of how financial supervisors can implement effective y2k programs, the joint year 2000 council intends to promote the sharing of strategies and approaches. for example, the basle committee on banking supervision has prepared a paper containing “ supervisory guidance on independent assessment of bank year 2000 preparations ”. this document is aimed at moving supervisors worldwide from a level of general awareness to a specific, concrete program of action for overseeing y2k preparations, both on an individual bank basis and on a system - wide basis. the joint year 2000 council intends to adapt this paper for use by financial market regulators and supervisors more broadly and to issue it as rapidly as possible with the endorsement of all four sponsoring organizations. the goal will be to provide guidance in developing specific year 2000 action plans for all types of financial market authorities. supervisors in countries that have gotten a head start on the issue can thereby provide the benefit of their experience to those who are starting later. those supervisors getting a late start have a need for tools of this type. the joint year 2000 council will also be working with the members of our external consultative committee, particularly the global 2000 coordinating group, to build on this effort and develop a y2k self - assessment tool that could be used broadly by the financial industry in countries around the world. we also intend to develop additional papers on a variety of y2k topics that might be of interest to the global financial supervisory community. at this point, i am sure that members of the committee have questions regarding the state of y2k preparations in various parts of the world. i think that it is fair to say that most believe a spectrum exists, with the united states at one end of the spectrum, and emerging market and undeveloped countries at the other end. there are likely exceptions of course ; some developed countries are probably less far along than they should be. some emerging market countries, on the other hand, appear to be quite advanced in their preparations. overall, however, there is still not nearly enough concrete, comparable information on the preparations of individual institutions to be able to make any confident statements about the state of global preparations in any detail. over the time remaining until january 2000, we hope to use the joint year 2000 council as a means of gathering a better