Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Frank Busalacchi, the IT Guy, and Rose Mary Woods

Accidents happen.

Things happen inadvertently. For instance, President Richard Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods made a mistake. She erased portions of Nixon's tapes revelant to the Watergate probe.

Sometimes important evidence just disappears, unintentionally of course.


Calendar entries for state Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi and his top assistant have been erased, making it impossible to know where they were for their first two years in office.

The Journal Sentinel recently requested Busalacchi's calendar going back to January 2003, but the Department of Transportation said his calendars for 2003 and 2004 were accidentally destroyed because of a problem with a computer server. Deputy Secretary Ruben Anthony Jr.'s calendars also are missing for those years.

Busalacchi has said he never talked to now-indicted Kenosha businessman Dennis Troha about tax troubles faced by companies Troha owned at the time. Busalacchi was to meet with Troha on the issue in April 2004, but Busalacchi said Troha - a major contributor to Gov. Jim Doyle - did not show up for the meeting.

The Journal Sentinel asked for Busalacchi's schedule to see how involved he was in the tax cases affecting Troha's firms. But the Department of Transportation said this week that it did not have the calendars for 2003 and 2004.

"This is nothing we did on purpose," said Chris Klein, an aide to Busalacchi. "It was a mistake that occurred."

...Sometime before August 2006, an information technology worker tried to back up the calendars of Busalacchi and Anthony but inadvertently erased them instead, Klein said. He said he did not know whether anyone else's calendar was wiped out.

Klein did not name the IT employee.

...A spot check of other state agencies by the Journal Sentinel found no other problems. Calendars for top officials going back to 2003 are available for the Department of Revenue, the Department of Health and Family Services and the Department of Workforce Development, the agencies said.

Sure. The calendar entries have disappeared, not on purpose. There's no coverup. It was just a mistake.

"Mistakes" can be so convenient sometimes.

2 comments:

Pete Fanning said...

BULL%&IT. As an email administrator, you do NOT have access to a person's data unless explicitly given that access. The only explanation is that FB removed those entries himself.

Backup Tapes exist if this IT person is of any sort of level of expertise. Also, Sarbanes-Oxley demands that all organizations have some sort of archiving in place thanks to Enron. I should know, I'm implementing one right now.

BS, BS, BS, double BS.

Fess up people.

Mary said...

I know.

It's aggravating that the media report the lame "disappearing data" excuses without pointing out how ridiculous they are.

An unnamed IT guy-- What a joke!