PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. - Gov. Bob McDonnell said Thursday he is commissioning an independent review of the computer crash that shut down Department of Motor Vehicle licensing operations for a week.
Twenty-five other state agencies were also affected by the outage, including 13 percent of executive branch file servers, according to information from the governor’s office.
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee of the General Assembly is joining the governor’s push to find out why hardware failed and what steps Northrop Grumman will take to fix the problem, restore data and ensure a similar outage will not occur again. Northrop Grumman has a $2.3 billion technology contract with the state.
“I have spoken personally with Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush. I expressed to him that extended lapses in state computer services was an unacceptable hardship on our citizens and employees,” said McDonnell in a written statement. “I made clear that I expected the best around-the-clock recovery efforts possible in order to reclaim and restore all missing files and data.”
Northrop Grumman, meanwhile, said it “deeply regrets the disruption and inconvenience” and that all repairs to the damaged storage area network system have been finished. The company, according to the governor’s office, will pay for the costs of the independent review.
The outage began Aug. 25 and affected the ability of state agencies to process licenses, child support payments and tax payments, as well as provide dozens of other services.
The JLARC is expected to select and announce the name of the independent reviewer soon.
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