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Oops! Techie wipes out $38 billion fund
Keystroke mistake deletes data for Alaska’s oil-funded account
Updated: 2 hours, 58 minutes ago
JUNEAU, Alaska - Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing an account worth $38 billion.

That’s what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents’ biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

“Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario,” said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow. The computer foul-up last July would end up costing the department more than $200,000.

Over the next few days, as the department, the division and consultants from Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. labored to retrieve the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand.

Nine months worth of information concerning the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence.

And the only backup was the paperwork itself — stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

“We had to bring that paper back to the scanning room, and send it through again, and quality control it, and then you have to have a way to link that paper to that person’s file,” Skow said.

Half a dozen seasonal workers came back to assist the regular division staff, and about 70 people working overtime and weekends re-entered all the lost data by the end of August.

“They were just ready, willing and able to chip in and, in fact, we needed all of them to chip in to get all the paperwork rescanned in a timely manner so that we could meet our obligations to the public,” Skow said.

Last October and November, the department met its obligation to the public. A majority of the estimated 600,000 payments for last year’s $1,106.96 individual dividends went out on schedule, including those for 28,000 applicants who were still under review when the computer disaster struck.

Former Revenue Commissioner Bill Corbus said no one was ever blamed for the incident.

“Everybody felt very bad about it and we all learned a lesson. There was no witch hunt,” Corbus said.

According to department staff, they now have a proven and regularly tested backup and restore procedure.

The department is asking lawmakers to approve a supplemental budget request for $220,700 to cover the excess costs incurred during the six-week recovery effort, including about $128,400 in overtime and $71,800 for computer consultants.

The money would come from the permanent fund earnings, the money earmarked for the dividends. That means recipients could find their next check docked by about 37 cents.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/1770202...915829?GT1=9145

OMG could you imagine? It's a real-life Southwest Airlines commercial...

"want to get away?"

I'd shoot myself before actually doing something like that





Well, OK, maybe not.

I would quit my job and run out the door and not tell anyone what happened lol

sorry guys...

Now easy......the guys didn't wipe out the $38 billion he just wiped out the applications for getting a piece. We have to have the applications in by March1, and some people still use the paper application. All he did was wipe out the scanned paper apps.

Still would it suck to realize that you just deleted a bunch of work? Heck yeah. Glad to see no one is throwing the person under the bus. See up here in Alaska we're nice folks! (though you'd have some ticked off alaskans if they didnt' get thier permenant fund dividend)

Regardless he still made a more than $200,000 mistake. That is a bad day...

Heck yeah....I can't say I'm happy to lose 38 cents either! I wonder if the really didn't get in trouble. It would be pretty cool if he didn't. (well for him anyway)

well if they let him work, then he got about 1800 to fix it

That is what we tech workers for the state call a bad day.

Obviously you don't want to screw up. But when inevitably you do screw up, you do not want it to end up in the news. The worst I've seen is one of my co-workers screw-ups got time on the nightly news and front page of the Dispatch.

Fortunately none of us have made the front page of CNN.com like this guy.