New Plan Will Fix Dallas County Computer Weakness
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - When a pipe burst last June, it flooded the Dallas County Records building, wiping out most of the county's computers and servers.
It took days for the system to get back up and running.
The county's newly elected commissioners court judge, Clay Jenkins, says the news stunned him. "It's clearly unacceptable a water line break can shut down our computer capabilities for several days."
Important documents such as deeds were lost in the floods. The county had to resort to process inmates by filling out the same forms they used before having computers.
The move temporarily forced Dallas County residents who wanted a marriage license to get one in Collin County.
Even before taking office, Jenkins has been meeting with the county's security and emergency management director Lisa Chambers to keep that from happening again.
Next month, they will launch what's called the continuous operations plan.
"What this is going to do is allow us to get our critical facilities at the county up and running as soon as possible. Where in the past it might have taken several days," says Chambers.
If something like last summer's flood happened again, the county to this day still doesn't have an alternative place to run its operations out of.
"We need to get a back-up facility online. I take office in less than a week. We're going to make it a priority to get that up and have that ready… they can flip a switch and the other facility can be up and running," says Jenkins.
The county will also soon be able to alert its more than 5,600 employees to any disaster or news through text messages and emails.
The University of Texas used this technology last September to warn students when a gunman opened fire on campus.
"They got the message to students and it was an absolute success," says Chambers.
Both Chambers and Jenkins assure residents the county's computer shortcomings won't have any negative impact on preparing for the upcoming Super Bowl, and that the county remains fully capable to respond to any disaster.
It will take six months to implement the new plan. Once complete, the county will conduct a disaster drill to see how well it works.
