headgasketidiot t1_j41txgr wrote
It's been down since December 26th (edit: apparently not true; see /u/mcmdreamer's comment below). I do software consulting for a living and I don't think I've ever even heard of an outage lasting that long.
All these small enterprise shops that provide "records management solutions" to government entities are always a grift. They hire some Eastern European developers to throw together a janky front end on a DB, and then the company itself is mostly just a sales team.
edit: just went through their linkedin. I was right that it's mostly sales, but they also have an in house software team. I guess they're just incompetent.
mcmdreamer t1_j428nip wrote
It hasn’t been down since December 26. It was back up last week but went down again so they could add more storage but their shipments were delayed.
headgasketidiot t1_j429h98 wrote
All I know about this is from the article, but it says:
>The system went down on Dec. 26, came up briefly in the middle of last week, then crashed again, she said.
Even if what you say is more accurate, that's still functionally down since the 26th. It doesn't do the users any good if you're back up intermittently and go right back down again.
mcmdreamer t1_j42bes4 wrote
I am a user of these sites. I was able to use them for land records searches while it was up, and when it’s back up tomorrow or Monday I’ll work on those next in my queue. If I need something urgently, I can’t just call the Town Clerk or travel to the town office.
The Town Clerks are all receiving updates from the CEO every couple days to let them know the current status.
headgasketidiot t1_j42cwil wrote
Wow, thanks for your clarification. I'll update my top level comments so they're more accurate. If you're willing, you should drop VTDigger a line and ask them to clarify because that article really gives a very strong impression that it's been entirely down with only the briefest window of being back up.
But also, if I may, that's still really bad service. Most of my contracts specify uptime of at least 99.9%. Usually, the highest level of service is called "5 9's," and it's 99.999%. If any of my clients' things went down for more than a few hours, I'd rightfully be chewed out.
mcmdreamer t1_j42ejla wrote
I agree that it’s been inconvenient for sure. But as I stated in another comment on this post, only about half of towns even have any ounce of land records online anyway. So having the online land records of ~60 towns using Cotts down for a couple weeks is still better than the ~120 towns that don’t have any land records online at all.
Edit: typo
headgasketidiot t1_j42isjq wrote
Yeah I hear ya. I'd like to think that there's an option other than this and no digitization in the year of our lord 2023.
In my line of work, I run across these kinds of niche government and/or NGO SasSes all the time. The total market for their software isn't that big and their clients are very change averse, so what ends up happening is a few companies carve up the space and never have any competition enter. This makes for small but extremely profitable companies that just sorta stick around forever, even as their service deteriorates. It's a really unfortunate pattern, and I wish governments invested more in co-owned open source solutions instead of letting these grifts continue.
[deleted] t1_j42va8v wrote
Don't trust anybody willing to offer IT services to a government.
EpictetussutetcipE t1_j4245y8 wrote
It's easy to develop. It's hard to securely develop. It's harder to securely develop on top of securely architected and framework systems and networks appropriately.
I'm going to go with least common denominator and say it was likely something that didn't have MFA...
headgasketidiot t1_j424z0a wrote
There's no one single thing that leads to a 3 week outage. That's so beyond the pale and only happens if you have a persistent culture of negligence and mismanagement.
EpictetussutetcipE t1_j427cxy wrote
100%
Pinakolonopin t1_j43mad5 wrote
This is the way all state agencies are run. There is zero money invested in IT, everything is ancient and the staff is buried under the massive workload.
cpujockey t1_j4g4bie wrote
Shit happens. Vendors suck. Not all IT pros are created equally. Still not a good excuse for a proper disaster recovery plan / yearly testing.
cjrecordvt t1_j427ajf wrote
> It's been down since December 26th. I do software consulting for a living and I don't think I've ever even heard of an outage lasting that long.
How long was UVMMC down last year?
headgasketidiot t1_j429tji wrote
I should've specified that I meant for SaaS, not necessarily for an org's own IT, which is a whole 'nother can of worms. That UVM outage was really something, though.
cpujockey t1_j4g4y3o wrote
The fact that no punitive damages were awarded is fucking incredible.
UVM med should burn for this. It took only one entitled employee on vacation with a corporate laptop, a VPN connection and reading personal email to cripple the health care system.
Well done UVM med. You're not too big to fail - you're failing all on your own.
BudsKind802 t1_j42dfa6 wrote
I believe it was November-April to get everything totally restored according to a nurse I know, but their main systems were back up by January.
pooticlesparkle t1_j43l53a wrote
It was down 25 days. Back entry and recovery took the lab almost 8 months. Back logs and covid and more acutely ill patients after restoration- who knows if that is still happening or some other factor. The hospital is always full.
Express-Day1376 t1_j52z1kk wrote
It has been out nationwide since christmas. Here in PA we can't get any civil court orders or dockets and haven't been able to since then. It's crippling the court system. Now I see why this is the only county in the entire state that uses this system.
Definitelynotcal1gul t1_j42rx2w wrote
If it's been 3 weeks, the data is gone. That's sad. I liked that website. I used it when we were looking to purchase land.
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