Politics & Government

Quick Hits: Township Board Revisits Server Crash

Trustees vote to establish moratorium on purchase orders until better IT process is in place.

West Bloomfield Township Supervisor Michele Economou Ureste presented a report at Monday's meeting in that offered explanations to the server crash Sept. 29, but the board put a halt to purchases that may be of help to fix them.

resulted in "catastrophic" data loss and email communication errors for weeks in to October, Clerk Catherine Shaughnessy said of the issue initially discussed Oct. 11. According to the report, which was prepared by information technology directors Mark Osinski of West Bloomfield and Jared Black of Waterford, the server crash was the result of a lack of internal knowledge of the township's virtual network as well as obsolete technology.

"Under the previous board … that system was installed without consideration of having the internal resources necessary to maintain that system," Ureste said.

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Osinski said he recommended that the board in 2008 purchase from Hewlett-Packard based on the understanding that HP would make a server crash simple to work through over the phone, but that has proven not to be the case.

"Every time our virtual enclosure has broken, it has taken HP 30-plus hours to get it back," Osinski said.

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Ureste added that the backup server had crashed four months prior to the September incident, but that HP had blocked the township from using software necessary to determine a hardware malfunction. "Our IT department had their hands tied behind their backs," she said.

Trustee Howard Rosenberg suggested a moratorium on most purchases of hardware and software after Shaughnessy expressed "a low level of confidence" in the process of the IT department in response to Black's report. Rosenberg suggested the moratorium last as long as the board needs to find a better process, and it was agreed upon unanimously.

Quick hits

  • The board voted to replace Woodlands Review Board member Bernadine Edwards, whose term ends Dec. 31, with Eleanor Squaire.
  • The board voted to hire Civic Center TV to redesign the township website for $7,500.
  • The board voted to budget $40,400 to the Greater West Bloomfield Cable Communications Commission for Phase 1 of remodeling


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