Their common goal is to conduct as much regular business as possible without the use of key computer resources.
Some departments are more affected than others.
For example, the county court system shut down most of its operations for two days. Staff members used that time to brainstorm interim solutions, working in concert with other county and court employees.
"We gathered together to determine what functions we could and couldn't do," said Gwen Taylor, 86th district court administrator.
While the court opened to the public Monday, Taylor said, it was still dealing with limited service availability.
"We are holding court [and] resumed our dockets on the 17th," she said, adding that current procedures are changing, day by day, and require a lot of "outside-the-box" thinking.
On Tuesday afternoon, the 13th Circuit Court released a statement from Judge Charles Hamlyn, who said while all "essential functions" are open, some court systems are still not operational.
"The two greatest impacts are to our docketing/scheduling system and to our file management system," Hamlyn said. "We do not have access to case files and parties are not able to file documents using the electronic filing system."
Since the court's file management system has been compromised, judges cannot access files in that system to look up any particular case: "We have had to cancel hearings because, while we can conduct a court hearing, let's say it's for a motion, I wouldn't be able to pull up that motion to prepare for the hearing."
In the meantime, Hamlyn said, "Emergency filings, personal protection order petitions and similar types of documents can be filed in-person at the court clerk's office."
Hamlyn added, "all constitutional rights are being provided. We can conduct court hearings, we can do arraignments, anything like that."
Court officials are hoping to have systems up and running by next week.
"If we have to cancel some hearings next week because we are not fully back, that's fine. We will triage our dockets and do what we can and adjust for what we can't. But we are open to the public," Hamlyn said.
Phone communication with court staff is still limited, officials said, and they encouraged the public to reach them by email at c13court@ 13thcircuitcourt.org
"All calls to the Friend of the Court office are being routed to the Michigan State Disbursement Unit at 877-543-2660 because our staff does not have access to that system either," a press release issued Tuesday said.
COUNTY CLERK'S OFFICE
Desktop PCs at the county clerk's office are now operating again, but with some limitations.
Staff do not have access to the in-house network, but they can access a variety of records via a cloud-based program that operates independently from the county's own servers.
"We are doing everything we can to find workarounds," said County Clerk Bonnie Scheele. "I think our IT folks and emergency management department are doing a phenomenal job, and I have faith that the county will be able to fix (the problem)."
CITY/BILLING
Traverse City can't accept most payments for now, City Manager Liz Vogel said. That includes payment of water, sewer, tax and other bills. Traverse City Light & Power is unaffected and can take payments as usual, according to a city website detailing impacted services.
With no network access, city employees can't record payments in the city's accounting software, Vogel said. The problem impacted third-party payment processors that connect to the software as well. So even if people sent in money, city employees currently have no way to credit it to the right account.
All late fees are being waived for the time being, and people seeking a permit from the city can still apply, Vogel said.
"Our staff are here to walk folks through that," she said. "No one's going to get a late fee; no one's not going to get what they need. We know the payment part will come later, so our frontline staff is working with the customer service end of things to make sure the public knows."
For day-to-day operations, city employees' desktop computers were scrubbed, and new antivirus software added, Vogel said. Employees are accessing the internet via wireless access points that link to cellular networks, Vogel said.
It's not ideal, but it ensures city staff can access their email accounts and complete other tasks. They're saving any new work to external hard drives.
Employees also are organizing and scanning old files, tackling projects that were "put on the back burner" in an effort to be creative with their time, Vogel said.
She credited Grand Traverse County network administrators for their quick reaction to the suspected ransomware attack. She said she's not aware of the city losing any data, nor does she believe any was stolen or compromised.
The fast response seems to have cut off any attempt to steal data that criminals could later ransom, Vogel said.
As to when network operations will be back to normal, she had no idea.
"We're not even guessing at this point," Vogel said.
© 2024 The Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Mich.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
