LANE COUNTY, OREGON
YEAR 2000 REGIONAL COORDINATION PROJECT
~ Version 4A ~

by: Cynthia Beal
Lane County Year 2000 Ready User's Group
June, 1998

This is a proposal for concerted community action, focused on creating a self-help environment for citizens, business owners, and public organizations interested in adequately addressing their computer date change problems before the year 2000.

I would like to suggest that concerned citizens join together as an adhoc working group known as the Year 2000 Lane County Regional Preparedness Team, and that they seek working partnerships with relevant educational and public outreach groups/institutions in the county and state to ensure that as many citizens as possible have an opportunity to address their date-change needs and supply-chain vulnerabilities.

The purpose of the Team is to bring skill, budget and focus to our current local meetings on y2k-readiness, and expand and then communicate y2k readiness work to the community-at-large, county wide, in a fashion that can be shared with other counties, states and countries.

The Team will solicit and coordinate participation from the following groups, but the list is not limited to these:

• Neighborhood Associations and citizen districts
• Land Grant College system - Extension services
• Lane County SAO (Software Association of Oregon)
• Y2K Ed-Net via Local Government Y2K User Group
• Eugene Library IPAC Lab (Internet Public Access Center - Janus Lindholm), and the Lane county library network
• Oregon Public Networking - OPN
• 4J School District - Les Moore
• LCC SBDC - Lane Com College Small Biz Dev Ctr (Gary Valde)
• University of Oregon - Business, IT and Institute for a Sustainable Environment
• SCORE
• Site-maintenance team that has developed the Millennium Salons' Forums ...Lost Valley Educational Center (community publishing; hard copy and Net) ...Lane Council of Governments (LCOG)
• Willamette Valley Business Alliance
• Chambers of Commerce county-wide

The Team will be sponsored by a 501c4 or 501c3 organization - tentatively agreed to by Lost Valley Educational Center, an intentional Community fostering sustainable community living in Dexter, Oregon.

Specifically, this Team will use the IPAC Lab at the Eugene Library (and other similar resources throughout the county) to help people run through the y2k self-inventory, self-assessment and self-remediation currently recommended by the SBA, Merrill Lynch, The Cassandra Project, General Motors, the State of Oregon, the President of the United States, and others - to the greatest extent possible - by:

1. Holding regular meetings that help people look at their systems and key partners' readiness, as well as plan for community contingency needs - known forthwith as "Plan B".

2. Creating on-line resources that really work for people and communicate findings, as well as allow for discussion and timely fact-finding, while eliminating liability for the information for the project team.

3. Bring in high school and college students this summer/fall/ to focus on having a local county-inclusive site by this winter that works numerous angles of y2k - inventory, assessment, patch downloading, safe-self-fixing, organizational and personal contingency planning, etc. Many kids are great with computers - they'll be able to buddy up with others (parents, friends' businesses, etc.) and help conduct self-inventories and self-assessments.

The focus for this first stage is on Communication/Awareness and creating a self-help environment using existing resources. As these two endeavors proceed, key players will emerge to format effective contingency plans based on the real-time needs of our County and our county's neighbors.

The Team will encourage private-businesses to help build a self-inventory and self-assessment website that WORKS for our community, so that their trained yk staff can handle more clients, since more people will do more of the basic legwork themselves. If potentially affected parties (like banks, computer sellers, etc.) help fund this effort, the fewer problems we (their borrowers and customers) experience, the fewer problems they experience.

County level coordination makes a lot of sense, since counties receive and redistribute most state and federal funds, and coordinating the best allocations of dollars and resources based on changes that y2k brings will probably be most flexible/effective at the county level.

PAID STAFF NEEDED:

Y2K County Project Volunteer Coordination Team:

7 person team - 3.5 FTE + Site Management Team. All persons should be currently y2k conversant and nearly up to speed on the scope of potential problems. Positions can start at 1/4 time if funding won't cover more. All positions need to be held by project development folk with a history of initiative or strong experience in the area of need.

All the following proposed contractor-positions on the Team are necessary. If we don't do one, we'll miss a critical part of our existing service infrastructure that must benefit from our work (schools, local government, neighborhoods, businesses, health and safety providers), and who could then move it forward to help the rest of the community they're already set up to serve. The jobs, started at once by perhaps only a couple of people, can be split as funding/volunteers become available.

Since y2k is a transitory and very site-specific event, best addressed by individuals, and it is a classic case of too-much-to-do, volunteers are mandatory, and volunteer coordination is the work that needs to be financed.

1) VOLUNTEER COORDINATORS/GRANT WRITERS/CO-DIRECTORS (2):

2 half-time staff people with successful grant-writing experience, to pull together existing y2k readiness suggestions and tools, and to identify all affected non-profits, busines groups and organizations who can contribute to local y2k readiness - i.e., folks already doing contingency planning and folks who must be up and running in order to serve should there be a need.

These co-coordinators will help grant-write to fund key community partners' y2k remediation, and help identify all potential y2k project assistance organizations (OPN, SAO, Libraries, Government Programs, etc.) that can benefit from grants and serve our community's remediation and contingency planning needs, as well as share the information globally to anyone who has need through a (probably non-interactive depending on budget) web site that documents our progress and shares our experience.

These positions will also do the funding work for this Team. One person should focus on existing public organizations and current partnerships and resources; the other person should have a background in non-traditional public organizations, both private and public community-of-concern organizations. This cross-fertilization ensures that more voices are heard from, and the broadest range of resources currently in place around our county is tapped.

2) IPAC - LIBRARY VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR (1):

1 half-time volunteer coordinator affiliated with IPAC and libraries - job is to coordinate volunteers that maintain the sites for our county and its organizations and citizens; meet with other coordinators and track city/county efforts in our area; help staff the IPAC labs with volunteers who can help people do the work; handle library-based community interfaces.

3) COMMUNITY COMMUNICATIONS - CONTINUITY/DISASTER RECOVERY coordinators (2):

2 half-time staff people to focus on coordinating volunteers and agencies to work on contingency and disaster recovery plans county wide, with various townships and cities, utilizing existing neighborhood organizations and community information delivery vehicles. Addresses critical shared infrastructure interruption impacts; mitigates health and safety issues; community organization issues; short-term and long-term. Includes insuring that all agencies needed for disaster recovery or social continuity are y2k ready, prior to the event horizons relevant to their use (i.e., Red Cross, all medical services, League of Women Voters, 911; Police, fire & ambulance, etc.) 1 person is through OPN; 1 person has current county emergency preparedness experience.

4) 4J/LCC/UofO EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR AND LIASON (1):

1 half-time volunteer coordinator affiliates with 4J/LCC/UofO - job is to coordinate volunteer student/parent and student/teacher teams that work with IPAC throughout the county via schools and libraries, and meet with other coordinators and track/publicize city/county efforts in our area - ideally a Lane County SAO member with strong interest in our local school system and its Web Interface.

5) PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR (1):

1 half-time volunteer coordinator that works with other private businesses and professional organizations in the area to bring volunteers and coordinate resources so that sharing of information is facilitated, initially focusing on banks, computer industry businesses and associations, and large corporations dependent upon community stability for their success here . Would identify and work with y2k project managers throughout the county.

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This team should have the ability to grow very fast, if necessary, on the existing base of county, city, state and non-profit org. services, with a private business partnership potential that can also be utilized quickly.

DOLLAR AMOUNTS

Positions are for independent contractors, and are based on the 1998 median income level for Eugene/Springfield area, adjusted upward for self-employment taxes. Subsequent staff positions, if any, can go through posting processes applicable to the organizations filling them. This formal team I'm proposing should stay small, and grow by stimulating action in identified partners whenever possible.

All jobs should not exceed 1/2 time, for as long as possible, to ensure that more people are brought in, and more perspectives are embraced. First funded amount should cover people through June, 2000, to ensure continuity of the project's awareness mission. Later stages can be funded if needed.

An additional amount of money in the initial (or subsequent) grants should cover:

1) Additional server space and software use/licensing (Bill Dale has specifics) and webmaster time. This particular portion should not be volunteer - it takes too much knowledge, and too much time. A considerable personal investment has already been made by Bill Dale, and several vehicles are up and ready for use, including very flexible forum software already used by professional remediators. Additional volunteers for site-mastering assistance can be coordinated through the IPAC coordinator, to work under the paid web-operations team when possible, and SCORE and SAO members and students in software clubs in our schools and colleges are likely candidates. A separate grant can be written for this, since the need will be more dynamic.

2) Minimal legal counsel - funding may not be necessary, but service will be; if the project is useful, members of the Practicing Law Institute's Y2K group may donate services, since they're frustrated with the lack of many tools that look like what I'm proposing, and realize that community discombobulation probably dooms some of their clients more surely than y2k itself.

TIMELINE:

Summer 1998 -

At least 3 meetings in IPAC (next one June 10) but could evolve into weekly, or whatever the interest level stimulated - technical orientations; assistance tools and site development, etc. IPAC (8 web capable machines and a T1 connection) is currently available - free to Eugene residents - and relatively unused 5 mornings a week. LCC also has T-1 and net resources. An LCC summer class on y2k is currently scheduled - material mainly draws from Gary North Forums and doesn't necessarily lead to a coordinated community approach.

September 1998 - Paul Berger of Lane County SAO has proposed a large community awareness meeting potentially sponsored by SAO: possible participants - Pacific Continental Bank, SELCO, EWEB, infrastructure partners like railroad, gas, telecom, - etc. I suggest we go with this, coupled with the results of this proposal (if any) and its summer work. EWEB and SELCO (Randy Harrington) have already indicated interest in communicating with the community.

Fall 1998 -

In-school project on community assistance site's development and use; High level readiness campaign for first anticipated glitches that are program based, and roll in with 1999-01-01.

Throughout 1999

Ongoing - mitigation, remediation, and contingency, simultaneously. Includes community-wide testing of various systems; infrastructure interruption days (power out - phone out - coordinated new systems functionality tests, etc.) In full swing with testing, feedback, and highly responsive volunteer coordination tools.

January-June 2000+

Prepare to either disband in June, 2000 because project is finished, or evolve to next stage.

The group can have an 18 month focus of preparation and then a 2+ year mission following y2k - remediation/continuity assistanc. For the next 18 months, all participants basically become the trainees that will eventually work continuity/remediation issues. They may find themselves employable by other companies. They may keep their family businesses running. They'll certainly have useful skills.

If y2k is a small glitch, we'll just save a LOT of money by having fewer problems. If it's a large glitch somewhere else, we'll be able to help. If it's a large glitch here, our community will be better prepared to weather the economic and infrastructure fluctuations.

Interested parties can contact me at the address below.

Best,

Cynthia Beal

cabeal@efn.org
Red Barn Natural Grocery
Eugene, Oregon

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Year 2000 Community Preparation Information: http://www.angelfire.com/mn/inforest/grassroots.html

-- Bill (billdale@lakesnet.net), December 13, 1998

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