School district's system needs upgrade, 2005 report states
JANESVILLE — A consultant more than three years ago suggested the Janesville School District's computer system needed better security, better management and more staff.
As a result of the study, dated April 2005, the school district added a new position—network engineer—to the 2007-08 budget.
But the engineer was never hired.
Doug Bunton, the district's director of business services, commissioned the 2005 report by Kerry Consulting Group.
Bunton said network engineers are in high demand, and three rounds of advertising the position failed to produce someone with the needed skills.
Then, IT manager Lowell Henn retired last year, and Bunton decided to concentrate on hiring a replacement to lead the department before hiring an engineer.
Brandon Keirns took over last January. After that, two more searches for a network engineer failed to produce a suitable person, Bunton said.
Now Keirns is gone. He said he resigned Thursday rather than be fired.
Meanwhile, the engineer position remains open.
Bunton said he wasn't trying to save money earlier by not hiring the engineer.
The engineer position will be considered as part of an audit of the district's IT needs over the next few months, Bunton said.
About $103,000 was budgeted for the engineer's salary and benefits. That budget item is now paying for the extra help Bunton has brought in to deal with the recent attack by a computer virus.
Bunton doubted whether the presence of a network engineer could have helped the district avoid the recent virus attack.
The 2005 report states that Janesville's IT department was understaffed in comparison to most other Wisconsin school districts. It also said:
-- Better and more manageable security was needed.
-- The IT department needed to "take advantage of technology tools to help with the management of its resources."
-- There was "little proactive management taking place … because there are not administrative systems or resources in place to track trends and performance" of the IT department.
-- "Training (ironically the primary business of a K12 school district) needs to be an essential element of all technology deployment and support."
Bunton acted on several of the report's recommendations, according to notes added to the report:
-- A help desk was established to handle calls and clerical duties and to dispatch technicians to trouble spots.
-- A help desk/problem tracking system was purchased.
-- The network was restructured to upgrade network-management capabilities and allow access from remote locations.
-- The library management system was upgraded.
A recommendation that library/media staff become part of the IT support staff for their schools is listed as "not fully implemented."
Could security upgrade have saved the day?
Janesville School District technicians were scheduled to install a new, more powerful antivirus program last summer, but that didn't get done, officials said.
Officials say it will never be known if the new Symantec antivirus program would have stopped the virus that crippled the district's computer network for well over a month. But they say the new antivirus software is more powerful than the old one.
A virus known as Virut!.gen attacked Sept. 19, causing widespread outages around the district, cutting off teachers and students from their files and programs. The virus was brought under control in recent weeks, officials said.
The new Symantec antivirus software can update itself every hour, while the old McAfee program updated itself just once a day, said Brandon Keirns, district manager of information systems who said he resigned Thursday.
But no one can guarantee 100 percent protection.
"If there was a foolproof way of keeping viruses out, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, and no one would have this problem," District Business Director Doug Bunton said.
Nov 20, 2008 at 12:59 p.m.
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Holy Moly! I somehow missed this article. 3 years after an audit and things were not resolved?! I would have lost my job 30 months ago not to mention any clients I have. What a joke! In regards to the engineer search, it certainly could have not been TOO extensive because there are plenty of people out there, myself included, who are qualified, probably overqualified by the sounds of it, that would at least entertain the idea of a position in the educational sector for the first time or again in my case. Something is clearly not right if it takes you that long to fill a position, especially an IT one.
The solutions here are quite simple but complex at the same time: 1) If you don't have the funds for a powerful AV Solution like Symantec or the like, albeit difficult, use a free one. OR 2) Do your homework and seek out grants, heck grovel at the doorstep of Symantec - you never know unless you ask.
This whole situation is very unfortunate and clearly could have been prevented. I read this and I ask myself, why were the recommendations of that audit not put into place in some way, shape or form promptly? Otherwise, you might as well of just thrown that money used to hire them directly in the Rock River.
I agree with Frusion, there are a number of folks, Bunton included, who are danged lucky to have their jobs or positions because I can guarantee I would not, and if they worked for me and didn't at a bare minimum at least accept responsibility, I would send them packing.
Nov 16, 2008 at 8:16 p.m.
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McAfee ? thats the worst junk you can buy ,free antivirus is better than that crap.
Nov 16, 2008 at 3:56 p.m.
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get ready for the tax bomb to drop. gyms or computer upgrades? hmm...lets drop the gym bomb first then get them (the taxpayers) for the computer stuff later. it is a con plain and simple.and in janesville we go for it like hungry fish. stupid hungry fish
Nov 16, 2008 at 12:39 p.m.
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AVG and Avast are good free solutions for home use, and not the only ones. What McAfee and Norton and other network-aware products offer is centralized management. Their desktop software is often bloated overkill for the average person, but when you have 4000 computers, you want a way to be able to see their status and push out updates from a central location.
Nov 16, 2008 at 8:33 a.m.
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sannio, thanks for sharing and I agree with you on AVG. I've been using AVG on a home network of 5 PC's and it has worked great. BUT, the bigger issue in this story is Mr. Bunton. If anyone has kept up with this ongoing saga, it is interesting how Mr. Bunton dances around never accepting any responsibility for the district computer mess. YES Mr. Bunton,"If there was a foolproof way of keeping viruses out, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, and no one would have this problem," However this is a fact of network management that you have failed to manage. It would be correct to say you are not the hands on guy that was responsible for managing the system, but this did happen on your watch and I don't think I've read ONCE that you feel bad about it or that you feel responsible for it! I am very upset about this because it was avoidable and especially after school conferences this past week in hearing from teachers regarding this issue. I have 3 children in Janesville schools and each teacher I asked about their computer experience was the same thing--the run around. One teacher even told me she was chastised for reporting problems. The person answering the phone at the help desk said "..oh, you again." The support and the attitude of the people answering the phone as in this example reflect on Mr. Bunton directly. As in the past several Gazette Extra stories, we keep hearing from Mr. Bunton "..that a contractor is working on it, we've singled out a person responsible for the mess and pushed him to resign". We've also heard postings from several of you saying "this would never happen where I work". How about it Mr. Bunton, can you raise your sense of urgency to do anything to keep the district network free of a virus like so many other businesses do? Also, is it in your ability to say: "this was on my watch and it is my fault. I apologize to all the parents who were not able to monitor your student’s grades and I apologize to the teachers who had to hold off entering grades and entering attendance and I apologize to the students in the programming class that had to surf the Internet because the V drive was gone and they could not retrieve their work. And one last thing, I hope you thinking you are dang lucky to still have your job!
Nov 16, 2008 at 7:42 a.m.
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Most people I know have McAfee anti virus on their computer because that's what was on it when they bought it. They never update the virus definition file, either. For those who want good protection without spending cash, I would suggest AVG, or Avast! software. I'm sure there are others. I use Avast!, and a nice man tells me "virus database has been updated". Sometimes he updates a couple times a day. I used to use AVG, but the IT manager at work said he liked Avast!, and I think it's very slick myself. AVG recently released an update that did a nasty thing to your computer (removed a system file). It's fixed now, of course, and the file can be replaced.
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