Pennsylvania State Police, pension agency lost some online records, officials say
The Pennsylvania State Police is working to recover access to online records of how it handled evidence, state officials said, blaming the loss of the records on a mistake during routine server maintenance
The same mistake also affected the State Employees Retirement System, which said online users temporarily lost access to a member services system this month.
State officials downplayed the effect on the agencies.
Gov. Josh Shapiro's Office of Administration blamed "human error" by a state employee who was performing routine server maintenance on Jan. 3. It did not elaborate, but said it was reviewing and updating internal information technology processes to prevent it from happening again.
The Patriot-News of Harrisburg/Pennlive.com first reported the matter.
Lost were records contained in a pair of applications that the state police use to manage evidence submissions and log evidence into police labs for testing, officials said.
The Office of Administration said the physical evidence remains secure and was never endangered. The state police said the agency has recovered some of the records and is operating on a temporary system to track and receive evidence.
County prosecutors became aware of the missing records nearly two weeks ago after the Pennsylvania State Police informed the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association.
The association's executive director, Kelly Callihan, said her organization told district attorneys that the impact on cases should be minimal because state police labs have policies for internally tracking evidence and documenting forensic testing.
Callihan said she thus far had not received any reports that district attorneys were having problems as a result of the lost records.
Dauphin County's district attorney, Fran Chardo, told The Patriot-News of Harrisburg/Pennlive.com that his office keeps paper records of the data it stores on the state's server. Cumberland County's district attorney, Sean McCormack, said the county has its own forensic lab.
The retirement system said no pension data has been lost, although the agency earlier this month notified account users that it could not provide access to an online system that provides members with an up-to-date, albeit unofficial, snapshot of their benefit data.
Agency staff brought that service back online Jan. 16, although users had to verify their identity and create a new four-digit personal identification number, the agency said.
Users also lost pension calculations they had saved in their online member services account while some smaller agencies were told to re-enter any partially entered or unposted batches of personnel and payroll data, the agency said.
The full statement from the Office of Administration can be found below.
"On January 3, human error by an Office of Administration (OA) employee in the course of performing routine server maintenance resulted in limited data loss from two applications used by the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) to manage and log evidence submissions, and by SERS for the Keystone User Login. OA and PSP have been able to restore access to nearly all of the data affected.
"The only PSP data affected is used by PSP's Bureau of Forensic Services. All physical evidence tracked and cataloged by the PSP remains secure and was never endangered.
"OA began working in coordination with PSP to restore all affected tracking records as quickly as possible after the issue began. PSP and SERS alerted relevant members of the public – including law enforcement partners and customers – and continue to keep them updated.
"OA took immediate action internally to address this incident and is conducting a thorough review and update of information technology policies, procedures, processes, and controls to prevent this kind of human error from happening again.
"PSP and OA continue to review this occurrence."