RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Saturday 31 March 2007 Volume 24 : Issue 61
ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, moderator, chmn ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy

This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24.61.html>

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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:49:52 PDT
From: “Peter G. Neumann”
Subject: Alaska Government worker formats wrong disks, backups unreadable

A computer technician accidentally wiped out Alaska’s huge data file (and the backup disk) containing nine months worth of information on the annual payout from the state fund (reportedly worth \$38 billion) that pays dividends to Alaskans out of the oil revenues. Seventy people had to work overtime for six weeks to re-enter the lost data from 300 boxes of paper. The error cost the state \$220,000 in overtime and consultants. [Source: CNN, 20 Mar 2007; PGN-ed, with thanks to Lauren Weinstein.]

[F. John Reinke also spotted this one (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17702021/) and commented:

Gooferment IT at its best. Great design and architecture. How come the only two copies of the data were in the same time zone? Where was security that one “custodian” could access both copies? Where was IT Leadership that had processes and procedures that could fail so miserably? An interesting object lesson. In business, there would be terminations for all involved. FJR

PGN]

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Makes my day when I get included in RISKS. Peter is a fussy editor (Sorry, Peter.) And, he rejects or ignores some of my submissions. But every once in a while, I slip one by the “catcher”.