The computer shutdown will also impact tonight’s county council meeting, which will not include planned agenda items including monthly division reports.
Much of the county computer system was shut down two weeks ago, following the discovery on May 25 that a virus had infected some computers in the courthouse network.
Computers at the county jail, on Water Street in Wilkes-Barre, were restored last Thursday, but the system slowed down over the weekend and stopped working on Monday, said Mark Rockovich, county director of corrections.
Rockovich confirmed the computer problems are preventing inmates from ordering commissary items, such as clothing and snack food. Inmates pay for commissary items with their own money, Rockovich said.
The ongoing computer outage has impacted the jail’s daily operations, requiring administrators to assign more manpower to perform tasks manually, Rockovich said.
He credited the jail staff, especially the records division, with adapting well to forced changes in work protocol the past two weeks.
“We are using our plans for not having computers at this time,” Rockovich said. “Is it extra work? Yes. Is it more manual labor? Yes.”
Inmates have received prescription medications throughout the computer outage, since all computerized medication records are backed up on paper, Rockovich said. Comments on social media suggesting that inmates are not receiving needed medication are false, he said.
The agenda for tonight’s council meeting is sparse — primarily because of the computer outage, which made simply compiling the agenda a difficult process, according to council Chairman Tim McGinley.
“We were supposed to have division reports,” McGinley said. “That’s not going to happen.”
McGinley said he has asked county Manager David Pedri to update council and the public on the status of the county’s recovery from the cyber attack tonight.
That recovery will continue throughout this week, according to David Parsnik, county director of administrative services.
County information technology workers and consultants are finding and fixing problems as they examine each of several hundred potentially infected county-issued computers, Parsnik said Monday.
“We are working on it,” he said. “We are trying to restore them as quick as we can and we are making progress.”
©2019 The Citizens' Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
