Governor McDonnell Announces Independent Review Of Recent State Computer Issues

(Thursday) September 2, 2010

Northrop Grumman to Pay for Report

Governor Bob McDonnell announced this morning further steps to be taken to address the unprecedented hardware failure and subsequent data corruption that has affected certain state agencies during the past week.  The Administration, together with the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC), will commission an independent review of the information system failures and contractor response that has impacted 13% of the Commonwealth’s executive branch file servers and 26 of 89 applicable executive branch agencies. The outside vendor will be chosen together to conduct the review and will be announced in the weeks ahead. The Governor further announced that Northrop Grumman has agreed to pay for the costs of the review.

Speaking about this announcement, Governor McDonnell remarked, “VITA officials and contractors have worked tirelessly over the past week to recover from this unprecedented hardware failure. At this point all impacted state agencies have had their service restored, and the process has moved to the finalization of access to, retention of, and clean-up of data. We are promptly turning our attention to determining exactly how this hardware failure occurred and how well the response was conducted. That will best be accomplished through an independent review conducted by a private external vendor. Our Administration will work with legislative leaders at JLARC to select that vendor in the days ahead. Once a vendor is selected that information will be released, along with a specific work plan, for the review. I have ordered this process to occur as expeditiously as possible.”

The Governor continued, “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.  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. I appreciate the company’s commitment to a full and comprehensive recovery from this system failure, and the agreement that Northrop Grumman would pay for the reasonable cost of the independent review that must take place immediately.”

Governor McDonnell concluded, “This recent computer failure is unacceptable. I look forward to learning exactly how this occurred, how we can prevent such a disruption in the future, and how we can improve responsiveness and data reclamation if future interruptions occur. The report produced by our external vendor will be thorough and detailed. And, we will move forward quickly and resolutely once it has been received and reviewed by the executive and legislative branches.”