headgasketidiot t1_j429h98 wrote on January 12, 2023 at 6:01 PM

Reply to comment by mcmdreamer in Cyberattack takes down land-records management system used by many Vermont towns by sickter6

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 on January 12, 2023 at 6:13 PM

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 on January 12, 2023 at 6:22 PM

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 on January 12, 2023 at 6:31 PM

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 on January 12, 2023 at 6:57 PM

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.