Pennsylvania state police, pension agency grapple with loss of online records

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• The Pennsylvania State Police is working to recover access to online records related to evidence handling after a mistake during server maintenance.
• The State Employees Retirement System also experienced a loss of online access to a member services system due to the same mistake this month.
• The Office of Administration under Gov. Josh Shapiro attributed the issue to “human error” during server maintenance on Jan. 3.

The Pennsylvania State Police is working to recover access to online records of how it handled evidence, state officials said, blaming the loss of the records on a mistake during routine server maintenance

The same mistake also affected the State Employees Retirement System, which said online users temporarily lost access to a member services system this month.

State officials downplayed the effect on the agencies.

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Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Office of Administration blamed “human error” by a state employee who was performing routine server maintenance on Jan. 3. It did not elaborate, but said it was reviewing and updating internal information technology processes to prevent it from happening again.

The Pennsylvania State Police is working to recover access to online records of how it handled evidence, state officials said, blaming the loss of the records on a mistake during routine server maintenance. (Pennsylvania State Police )

The Patriot-News of Harrisburg/Pennlive.com first reported the matter.

Lost were records contained in a pair of applications that the state police use to manage evidence submissions and log evidence into police labs for testing, officials said.

The Office of Administration said the physical evidence remains secure and was never endangered. The state police said the agency has recovered some of the records and is operating on a temporary system to track and receive evidence.

County prosecutors were notified of the missing records nearly two weeks ago.

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Dauphin County’s district attorney, Fran Chardo, told The Patriot-News of Harrisburg/Pennlive.com that his office keeps paper records of the data it stores on the state’s server. Cumberland County’s district attorney, Sean McCormick, said the county has its own forensic lab.

The retirement system said no pension data has been lost, although the agency earlier this month notified account users that it could not provide access to an online system that provides members with an up-to-date, albeit unofficial, snapshot of their benefit data.

Agency staff brought that service back online Jan. 16, although users had to verify their identity and create a new four-digit personal identification number, the agency said.

Users also lost pension calculations they had saved in their online member services account while some smaller agencies were told to re-enter any partially entered or unposted batches of personnel and payroll data, the agency said.