By Joe Johnson
A software bug this weekend caused the failure of computer hardware throughout the Athens-Clarke County government.
As a result, several departments were without computer services all day Monday, and services had yet to be restored to some departments as of Tuesday afternoon.
“Over the weekend, several pieces of physical hardware that make up the server infrastructure for ACCGov that runs departmental applications such as the Planning Department's Self-Service Portal / Building Inspection's Energov system / GIS mapping functions, file shares, and other items failed due to a software bug in the hardware,” county Public Information Officer Jeff Montgomery said.
The accgov.com email server was briefly down on Tuesday, he said.
According to Montgomery, the county’s Information Technology Department already had “an extensive incident response plan designed to be used in circumstances much like this one.
“IT has already received replacement hardware and has begun installation, restoration, and backups. Some components are already coming back up,” he said. “They will continue to replace hardware which requires physical installations and rewiring, backup and restore information, and bring systems back online as soon as possible.
Montgomery said that some departments have temporary workarounds. Planning, for example, was open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in order to take physical submissions with the self-service portal down.
Police were receiving 911 calls as normal, but had to undertake some more manual processes similar to what they do when there is a system maintenance downtime window for dispatching
Newly-generated police reports were still unavailable to the public as of Tuesday afternoon.
“We do not have access to our records management software, said Lt. Shaun Barnett, ACCPD’s public information officer.
The county jail's website has not been updated since early Monday morning, and it appears that the Clerk of Courts site is functioning.
“Some of the recovery just takes a little time even once we have the hardware,” Montgomery said. “It is expected that this process may take several days for all systems to be fully restored. Mission critical applications that serve our community are being prioritized.”