Kansas Taxpayers Network
P.O. Box 20050
Wichita, KS 67208
316-684-0082
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Editorial for: Nov. 20, 1998

ARE WE AS READY AS DUBBO?

By Karl Peterjohn

I once spent part of my vacation, or as they say it down under, holiday, in Dubbo. Dubbo is a town of 38,000 located a couple of hours west of Sydney, Australia. This Australian vacation was a much needed break from my stressful computer job.

This was 17 years ago and I had gone a couple of years without any vacation. I wanted to go somewhere warm and escape the Kansas winter, someplace foreign, and a place where everyone spoke English. After hearing Australian accents, I thought I got at least two out of three right. So I spent two weeks touring New Zealand and a then week on my own in New South Wales, Australia. Towards the end of the trip I wanted to visit the "outback," so I drove my rental car to Dubbo.

In many ways, I felt like I hadn't left Kansas and this surprised me. The Blue Mountains start at the western edge of the Sydney suburbs. They rise up like a shorter version of our Appalachians and the road eventually led me into the flatland west of these scenic mountains. Dubbo looked very much like western Kansas surrounded by some of the best wheat growing area in that state. The average rainfall is generally at or under 20 inches a year the locals said.

Dubbo was a Southern Cross version of small town Kansas. The homes, the McDonalds fast food, and the farm stores looked like Main Street, Kansas. The tallest buildings were the grain elevator and the water tower. Of course, everyone drove on the wrong side of the road, the beer was too warm, and you needed to do the Australian salute when you were outdoors. However, the locals were friendly to this vacationing "Yank" who had wondered into town during the first days of the brutally warm Australian summer of 1981.

My mind came back to Dubbo when I came across a story out of the large Australian newspaper posted on the internet. The article discussed the steps being taken by the Dubbo council to prepare for year 2000 or y2k. In the semi-arid part of Australia water is just as important as it is in Kansas. The Dubbo council was worried about their local electric utility's reliability and were getting back up generators to assure water and sewage system operation after December 31, 1999.

Dubbo residents have a good reason to be cautious about rolling into the year 2000 and possible computer failures. In the neighboring state of Victoria a large part of that region is still without gas service due to a recent industrial accident. The loss of gas service shut down many factories and laid off thousands in Melbourne.

A few years back a computer glitch in aluminum plants in Australia and New Zealand caused plant shutdowns which caused massive damage which couldn't be fixed for several months. Like y2k, this was a simple computer error concerning dates. The results were horrific. In the largest city in New Zealand a power failure shut down electrical service for weeks creating massive problems.

Some of these problems are similar to the y2k computer problem. All affect key services and utilities. The y2k problem won't go away. As this is being written, there are barely 400 days left until this rollover. This is a large problem which can not be avoided in our computerized age. This is the first cyber crisis which touches everyone worldwide who uses computers, relies upon embedded controllers within computerized systems, or deals with firms using mainframe systems dependent upon computer languages like COBOL.

Meanwhile President Clinton has been unwilling, unable, or too incompetent to provide any leadership on this issue. Clinton has only spoken publicly on this issue once. Last summer Clinton's platitudes on y2k were buried in a speech which announced another foreign aid bailout for Russia. The national news media ignored y2k and focused upon Russia.

The most recent worldwide cost estimate from Cap Gemini computer consultants for fixing y2k is $858 billion. This is more than the annual Gross Domestic Product of Germany. The world has a problem. The U.S. has this problem. Ditto for Kansas and for each and everyone of us.

So tiny Dubbo is getting ready for the year 2000 and it will be summer January 1 for them, not winter. They are following the scout's motto of "Be Prepared." Regardless of the misfeasance or non feasance in Washington, Kansas and every community in Kansas needs to get ready too.

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Karl Peterjohn is the Executive Director of the Kansas Taxpayers Network (KTN). Peterjohn spent 10 years working in the computer industry. No column will be issued the week of Nov. 27. Happy Thanksgiving!