COMMISSIONERS MEETING TURNS HEATED OVER MISSING MDT

  

A normally routine part of the County Commissioners meeting turned heated this morning.  During the accounts payable report, it was learned that the county is still paying the city for network hosting, even though almost all of the county’s data is now carried on their own network.  The city claims that there are still a few county computers on their network.  County Judge John Brieden says that the charges for the hosting have been reduced to $5000 for the past 3 months and that he will be meeting with the city manager Thursday to see if the hosting can be ended.  One computer the city says is still on their network is a mobile data terminal that has gone missing.  The terminal was removed from a sheriff’s patrol unit and taken to the city with other units to have all the information removed and taken off their network.  When the data terminals were returned to service in the sheriff’s vehicles, the one unit was missing.  At this point, no one at the county or the city can locate or account for the missing data terminal.  County Commissioner Kirk Hanath says he is outraged about this and places the blame on the county’s IT department.

A mobile data terminal is essentially a ruggedized laptop computer that is used to access data in a patrol unit or EMS unit.  County officials say that even if the terminal went missing before it was cleared of its data, there is little chance of someone gaining access to the data because it is password protected.  The last time the missing terminal logged onto the network was in April, when it was removed from service.