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Council paralysed by glitch in e-mail system
5:30am Wednesday 28th February 2007
Comments (26)
COUNCIL chiefs in the New Forest have launched a major investigation after their e-mail system was paralysed for a week.
IT staff are working with Microsoft in a bid to pinpoint the cause of the glitch, which prevented council officers from sending or receiving e-mails.
"At this stage I can’t give you an explanation as to why the problem has occurred but I’m confident we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
New Forest District Council chief executive, Dave Yates
The system went down last Tuesday, affecting staff at the council headquarters at Appletree Court, Lyndhurst, and other centres such as Lymington town hall. The initial failure is understood to have been followed by a second and completely unrelated problem.
Experts were unable to restore the e-mail system until yesterday, leaving employees to trawl through a mountain of messages from colleagues and the public.
Chief executive Dave Yates said: "We're operating a replacement system using two other servers.
"It's only when we start going through all the e-mails that have accumulated in the past few days that we'll know if we have missed any time-related items. We are continuing to work with Microsoft to get to the bottom of the problem and prevent it happening again in the future.
"Other council systems were unaffected."
A council source, speaking before the problem was resolved, said: "There are thousands of people working for the authority and no-one can do any work other than the absolute basic.
"This is costing the taxpayer thousands of pounds in wasted time. People are missing appointments because they can't access diaries and urgent or date-sensitive e-mails, and deadlines have been missed."
The issue was raised at a council meeting on Monday night, when Mr Yates apologised to councillors, colleagues and residents of the district.
He added: "We're working hard to minimise any disruption to the public.
"At this stage I can't give you an explanation as to why the problem has occurred but I'm confident we'll get to the bottom of it."
Council chairman David Scott said: "It's a very complex situation that has never happened before."
Your Say YourThis is Hampshire
Bill G, says...
7:33am Wed 28 Feb 07
Ted, New Forest says...
9:24am Wed 28 Feb 07
Surely if the staff there are imcompetent and can't resolve it then they should have seeked outside help sooner. There are hundreds of firms in the Yellow Pages or on the internet that can help. Why didn't the council invoke a business continuity plan?
If they were running the IT in my business then I would expect someone to fall on their sword. Will we see job adverts for IT in NFDC in the Echo soon?
John, Southampton says...
10:55am Wed 28 Feb 07
Graham, says...
11:03am Wed 28 Feb 07
Garry Trestump, Soton says...
12:41pm Wed 28 Feb 07
You'd have problems then!
Rob, Southampton says...
12:55pm Wed 28 Feb 07
rob is an expert, says...
2:56pm Wed 28 Feb 07
Rob wrote:Are you some sort of IT Guru?
In this day and age I find it hard to believe that an important information system such as email can be down for a week.
Have no one in the council hear of Disaster Recovery. I take it the IT Manager has offered to resign?
Ted, New Forest says...
3:53pm Wed 28 Feb 07
rob is an expert wrote:Possibly
Rob wrote: In this day and age I find it hard to believe that an important information system such as email can be down for a week. Have no one in the council hear of Disaster Recovery. I take it the IT Manager has offered to resign?Are you some sort of IT Guru?
LOS, says...
4:19pm Wed 28 Feb 07
Mrs. De Pointe, says...
4:42pm Wed 28 Feb 07
It might encourage people to actually talk to each other, write a letter or even make a phonecall.
Graham, says...
6:07pm Wed 28 Feb 07
Garry Trestump wrote:Garry.
Graham, what if your diary spontaneously combusts? You'd have problems then!
How can you have a diary that does ANYTHING spontaneouslly?
Ernie, anywhere says...
11:25pm Wed 28 Feb 07
Looks like a severe lack of skill and ability to me...
Robert, says...
2:02am Thu 1 Mar 07
Debashis, Kolkata (India) says...
7:48am Thu 1 Mar 07
Pendennis, says...
10:11am Thu 1 Mar 07
That's true. I saw him fetching them from the restaurant of the Lyndhurst Park Hotel.
Ernie, ,,, says...
10:13am Thu 1 Mar 07
Debashis wrote:Look in computer management,(event viewer) there will be an entry showing the error in detail follow the prompts...
I have a problem with my pc. i have broadband connection wth my pc and i used SKYPE but when i talk to soe one after a while a message will appear "generic host process for win32 services has encountered a problem" what should i do, please suggest me. My OS is MicroSoft Windows Xp with SP2.
Make sure all windows updates are installed, make sure virus protection is up to date finally check skype for an update to the skype program...
Alan, Eastleigh says...
11:59am Thu 1 Mar 07
rob is an expert wrote:Let's hope not. Anyone who is so quick to point the finger of blame without knowing the full facts would be a liability to any customer - including NFDC.
Rob wrote: In this day and age I find it hard to believe that an important information system such as email can be down for a week. Have no one in the council hear of Disaster Recovery. I take it the IT Manager has offered to resign?Are you some sort of IT Guru?
Robert, says...
2:01pm Thu 1 Mar 07
Sometimes I almost go to sleep before the new page loads.
I have a feeling that Treestump is behind it all.
Matt Shields, Sitting down watching "LOST" says...
3:59pm Fri 2 Mar 07
Steve Sandeman, Home says...
4:06pm Fri 2 Mar 07
E-mail can be distributed to lists of people as well as to individuals. A shared distribution list can be managed by using an e-mail reflector. Some mailing lists allow you to subscribe by sending a request to the mailing list administrator. A mailing list that is administered automatically is called a list server.
E-mail is one of the protocols included with the Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite of protocols. A popular protocol for sending e-mail is Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and a popular protocol for receiving it is POP3. Both Netscape and Microsoft include an e-mail utility with their Web browsers.
Kevin Littlechild, Consuming Large Volumes of Food says...
4:07pm Fri 2 Mar 07
Keith Simmons, McDonalds says...
4:10pm Fri 2 Mar 07
Kevin Littleshild, Burgerking says...
4:18pm Fri 2 Mar 07
Robert Watmough, Regent's Park, So'ton says...
7:55am Sun 4 Mar 07
Keyboards can tolerate remarkable quantities of crumbs. They don't like real ale, though, the heavy, sticky sort. They don't like it on 'em....
(Pace Lance-Corporal Jones)
Linus Torvald, England says...
2:56pm Sun 4 Mar 07
And does everyone remember the string of adverts by Microsoft recently when it was trying to kid everyone that world+dog is choosing Windows over Linux because it is so much more reliable..? HA-HA-HA-HA!
PS - The only two people whom I know to have purchased a new PC to get Vista have both found it impossible to send any e-mail to more than 5 e-mail addresses at a time: so maybe MS really is working hard to reduce spam..!
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Rob, New Forest says...
6:46am Wed 28 Feb 07
Have no one in the council hear of Disaster Recovery. I take it the IT Manager has offered to resign?