The City of Haverhill is transitioning to a new website address after two different holiday outages a month apart.
The city’s temporary Web address is www.cityofhaverhill.org even though its original address, www.ci.haverhill.ma.us, is back online. Nelson Valverde of West Newbury-based GreenNet said his company had both its main server and a backup go down over the weekend.
“Our server hung up and the backup hung up. It was one of the most extreme circumstances where both hung up the same time. I checked it on Friday. It was ok,” Valverde said. “I understand it is frustrating. They (city workers) come back after a long holiday and everyone wants to get their mail,” he said.
As for the April, Patriot’s Day holiday, outage, Valverde confirmed the city failed to pay its bill. He said his employees did not take the city’s services offline, but rather it was done automatically. “It’s an automated service. We put it back and assumed they will eventually pay,” he added.
GreenNet does not host the city’s website, but rather controls how Internet computers reach the Web address—known as Domain Name System (DNS) service. He said it is not easy to move the service, but he would work with the city if they choose to do so.
Mayor James J. Fiorentini gave city councilors a private email briefing yesterday.
“The problem is not with the city, or with our servers all of which are up and running. Our outside IT consultant, HIQ, does not host or administer our website, and they have nothing to do with the problem. The problem seems to lie with our website hosting company, greennet.net,” Fiorentini said.
The email also revealed, contrary to previous official statements, the current site was built and hosted by Troy Michigan-based Revize. City officials previously claimed they built the site with city employees.
“In the slightly longer term, we are going to register a new domain name and getting a new hosting company. We are looking at Haverhill.gov. This will take a few days,” Fiorentini said.
Attempts to reach city Purchasing Agent Orlando Pacheco were unsuccessful by deadline.
As important as a website is, one would think that a knowledgeable IT person would be checking in periodically to make sure the website is working AND that the hosting company, once notified, would also jump on the problem; that SOMEONE in the chain of responsibility would DO SOMETHING TO RESOLVE THE ISSUES, and not wait until the next business day to get the system up and running. After all, the City of Haverhill is a multi-million dollar corporation, and its residents (THAT’S YOU AND ME —- who keep the City in business and deserve some consideration) should be able to communicate with, access information, and receive answers 24/7. As it is, everyone is pointing a finger at everyone else, and no one is taking responsibility for this and the other fiascos.
Seems to me to be a complete lack of concern on the part of all of those who are charged with the responsibility of keeping this system up and running. Have we had enough of this, folks?
Time for a complete evaluation of all of the vendors and employees charged with the responsibility of keeping the city website up and running, make changes where necessary, hire a new IT Director if no one has the expertise to manage this system, and stop this lunacy.
There is only one person responsible for this…The Mayor!!
At one time the city had two IT Directors….one managing school issues, and one managing the city side. A few years ago the school IT Director left and the city IT Director took over those responsibilities. Within the past 2 years then the city IT Director retired. And the jobs have now sat vacant for almost two years because the mayor refuses to fill the positions.
And although I admit I don’t know for sure…my educated guess based on the historical integrity and actions of this lying, defrauding mayor is that he still budgets for the two positions. That means taxpayers are paying for a professional IT person to manage these issues but there is no actual person in the job making sure these things don’t happen. And this is just the city website. Imagine the IT issues that must sit undressed in the schools all across the city because this mayor refuses to fill those positions?
But the real kicker with this fraud is that if, and when, he does fill the positions he’ll make a spectacle of it to sell uninformed citizens that he’s to be credited for doing something great. He’ll spin it to try and take credit for solving a problem that he created.
Well said Jack and right on the spot……just like with hiring cops. The Mayor makes a huge spectacle about hiring cops when all he is doing is keeping up with attrition within the dept……we had way more cops back int he 90’s than we do now. I guess crime was worse then than it is now. This guy is the master. He taught the Wizard of Oz how to fool the masses. Sad, but true and people have no idea what is really going on.