Insecure and
dangerous to date
The US state of Texas has taken its voter registration
contract out of the hands of Big Blue over data security and disaster
recoverability fears. (I guess they're still welcome in Florida. sub.ed.)
The state was involved in a $863 million data centre
consolidation project being handled by IBM. However it became worried when a server being managed by IBM crashed
resulting in a 13-day outage of the office's business records filing system.
A spokesman from the Secretary of State's office saying
that the incident showed that IBM was useless when it came to recovering lost
data. The state's Department of Information Resources, which is
overseeing the IBM contract, gave permission for the agency to withdraw its
election systems from the contract, the report said.
Following its withdrawal
from the IBM project, the agency will set up its own data centre with two
separate back-up locations. The project started in November 2004 and was supposed to
have been completed by January 2006. Not
only was it late but it appears to have been a complete waste of cash.
Under the contract, IBM was supposed to have helped Texas
build a statewide voter registration system that would be complaint with Help
America Vote Act standards.