So, the County Clerk’s office computer system has been down since Monday:

(December 20, 2006) — In the wake of a major computer failure that has left countless real estate loans and sales in limbo, Monroe County Clerk Cheryl Dinolfo said Tuesday she hopes the office will return to normal operation by week’s end.

(snip)

Even if the Clerk’s Office system does go back into service Friday, there will be a backlog of abstractor work and document filing. Then comes the Christmas holiday.

Yikes.

“Anybody who is waiting for money is just going to have to continue to wait,” said Steve Butcher Sr., a Rochester real estate lawyer. “People don’t realize it, but 25 percent of the economy is in real estate. This will slow down that segment of the economy in Monroe County.”

Well, I respect Dinolfo’s vision. It’s time somebody put the brakes on our overheating local economy. I was going to do it, by being less consumerist this season, but this really takes the pressure off me. Whew! Gotta cut this short, I now have to run to the mall.

But, seriously, why is this news? Here’s one reason:

Deputy County Clerk Justin Roj said Tuesday that the office had already “expressed our displeasure” with the county’s information services staff, which chose to attempt the storage upgrade on Monday morning just before the start of business.

Roj said it would have been best to do the work Friday evening, leaving a full weekend to recover from any problems. He said the Clerk’s Office did not know the schedule of the project until after the failure occurred Monday morning.

Asked about that, Dinolfo said “The scope of the work was such that it was hard to predict the impact it would have on our office. Sometimes it’s hard to predict that a glitch is going to occur.”

1. The blame game: passing it off on the IT staff. I’m a software geek. For projects with this kind of impact, in my experience, management are, at worst, aware of it via email to all users letting them know when and what’s going down.
2. Uninvolved management style: I know there’s a lot of stuff going on at the County Office, but at best, you’d think management would take an interest in one of their key, revenue-generating systems and “know” at least the high-level project schedule. Like that it was going to be done on a friggin monday morning.
3. Pretty photo-ops and press releases aside, something like this can really show the true colors of how something is being run. This elected office is often a springboard to other elected management positions. Like County Exec, for example. And it’s another example of how just being a member of the RBA doesn’t automatically make you good for Rochester business, short or long-term.