To The IT Director/Engineer & Web Operations:
I hope you will share this email and discuss it amongst all the appropriate parties and take it seriously. I am in IT and a Systems Engineer and am very concerned that for years I have always gotten the System Maintenance Window till 6:00am message and have been unable to access the Sex Offender registry any time during the late night hours. Well heck look at what time you are receiving this message.. It is 2:04am.
However yes people do want to view this information at 2, 3:00am. It is 2008 and it would be so nice of you to think of the availability of this application/information not only on a technological standpoint but for an informational to the public standpoint. I know on an IT standpoint your stance is not necessarily ensuring the content of the site, but ensuring the data is good and that maintenance is occuring and that the server/application is operational.
However I am sure some of you have children and well hearts.. and would want to someday soon consider including adding the sex offender registry into your list of projects in your budget to ensure that it stays up 24/7. Is anyone there of the opinion that this website has had to go down for maintenance constantly for too many years too long?? I know many people of the public are.. I can’t be the only one..What could you do? I do not know your configuration by any means. However I as a systems engineer know that there are feasible technical options out there..
Such as:
- Clustering
- Data Replication
- Load Balancing
- You could replicate the database between 2 servers ensuring they stay updated and perform maintenance on each at different times, keeping one server up at all times.
- You may be on an older system, maybe an upgrade could provide you with a better solution. Migrate to a different solution that provides higher availability.
- Maybe you are performing too much maintenance that is not required constantly.
- Maybe you could limit your maintenance window.
These are just quick thoughts. We are talking about sex offenders. We as the public are at risk. We depend on that website. Other State websites put our Texas sex offender website to shame. We were the beginning of the Amber alert. President Bush who is from Texas signed a law regarding the Amber plan. Shouldn’t we be setting a much higher standard?
Regards,
CrimesandJustice
May 28, 2008
Popular