TMCnet News
State to bill tech vendor [The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.](Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, VA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 14--RICHMOND -- The state's technology vendor will pay at least $250,000 for an independent review into how one of the state's computer servers had an unprecedented meltdown. Sam Nixon, head of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, assured testy lawmakers yesterday that Northrop Grumman -- the company with a 10-year, $2.4 billion contract to provide the state government's computer services -- will pay for the review, and may pay a fine for the downtime suffered by some agencies as a result of the server failure. Nixon was speaking to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, which had scheduled an update on the state's computer contract long before the late-August computer crash. Most of the questions Monday, however, revolved around what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. Nixon said that the server, a machine the size of eight refrigerators that sits in a building in Chesterfield, showed problems with two motherboards on Wednesday, August 25. When a technician replaced one, the other died, leading to a cascading corruption of data. Nixon said the hardware was the best money could buy, at least two years ago, and that the failure was unprecedented. Employees from VITA and Northrop Grumman started working to recover data, Nixon said, but he is not pleased with the amount of time it took to transfer backup files from tapes. While most of the 26 state agencies affected were back online within a day or two, the DMV, Department of Taxation and state Board of Elections were down for nearly a week, for at least some services. The recovery effort was "around the clock but unacceptably slow," Nixon said. At the DMV, that meant no one could renew or get new driver's licenses if it required a photo. In fact, Nixon said, data from license transactions from the three days prior to the computer failure is still being sought. He said that data recovery experts in Minnesota are working to retrieve that data, and while the job isn't done yet, he is still hopeful it will be restored. Northrop Grumman Vice President Sam Abbate apologized for the computer failure, and said the company is doing everything it can to learn from the incident. "We will listen, we will learn, we will do better," Abbate told legislators. "We deeply regret the disruption caused by the server outage." Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, told Abbate he thinks Virginians deserve a public apology. "It didn't take very long for my telephone to start ringing," Houck said, explaining that his constituents were upset at the outage. It was clear from the meeting that legislators expect Northrop Grumman to be responsible for costs associated with the server failure. "I would hope Northrop Grumman would cover those costs and not put it back on the taxpayers or the agencies," Houck told Nixon. "I think Northrop Grumman should stand clear for the entire cost of that." Nixon said he estimated that an independent review, which is going to be done by an as-yet-unspecified outside vendor, would cost about $250,000. "That will not be a cost borne by the commonwealth," he assured Houck. Nixon said Northrop Grumman's contract also allows for penalties for server downtime, so that could cost up to $100,000 from the company, perhaps taken in credit against agencies' technology bills. "I don't expect agencies to pay for these services while the servers were down," Nixon told reporters after the meeting. He also suggested Northrop Grumman might be on the hook for some damages, depending on whether the independent review finds the company negligent in some way. The independent review has not yet begun, but when it does, it will last about 90 days. In the meantime, both Nixon and Abbate said their organizations are making some changes to try to prevent future failures and improve responses. "We are not going to wait to make any changes necessary," Nixon said. Chelyen Davis: 540/368-5028 Email: [email protected] To see more of The Free Lance-Star or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://fredericksburg.com/flshome. Copyright (c) 2010, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544) |