Oops! Tech Error Wipes Out Alaska Info
By ANNE SUTTON, Associated Press Writer
TUE MAR 20, 9:28 AM
JUNEAU, Alaska - Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single
keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out
a disk drive containing information for an account worth $38 billion.
That's what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk
drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine
maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant
information for an oil-funded account _ one of Alaska residents'
biggest perks _ and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.
There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line
of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.
"Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-
case scenario," said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy
Skow. The July computer foul-up, which wiped out dividend
distribution information for the fund, would end up costing the
department more than $200,000.
Over the next few days, as the department, the division and
consultants from Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. labored to retrieve
the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand.
Nine months worth of applicant information for the yearly payout from
the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images
that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier,
the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed
over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth
certificates and proof of residence.
And the only backup was the paperwork itself _ stored in more than
300 cardboard boxes.
"We had to bring that paper back to the scanning room, and send it
through again, and quality control it, and then you have to have a
way to link that paper to that person's file," Skow said.
Half a dozen seasonal workers came back to assist the regular
division staff, and about 70 people working overtime and weekends re-
entered all the lost data by the end of August.
"They were just ready, willing and able to chip in and, in fact, we
needed all of them to chip in to get all the paperwork rescanned in a
timely manner so that we could meet our obligations to the public,"
Skow said.
Last October and November, the department met its obligation to the
public. A majority of the estimated 600,000 payments for last year's
$1,106.96 individual dividends went out on schedule, including those
for 28,000 applicants who were still under review when the computer
disaster struck.
Former Revenue Commissioner Bill Corbus said no one was ever blamed
for the incident.
"Everybody felt very bad about it and we all learned a lesson. There
was no witch hunt," Corbus said.
According to department staff, they now have a proven and regularly
tested backup and restore procedure.
The department is asking lawmakers to approve a supplemental budget
request for $220,700 to cover the excess costs incurred during the
six-week recovery effort, including about $128,400 in overtime and
$71,800 for computer consultants.
The money would come from the permanent fund earnings, the money
earmarked for the dividends. That means recipients could find their
next check docked by about 37 cents.
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