HILO — Hawaii County has not been accepting new building permit applications since Monday due to a software snafu.
HILO — Hawaii County has not been accepting new building permit applications since Monday due to a software snafu.
Public Works spokesman Barett Otani said staff are unable to access software used to process permit applications after a glitch and are relying on an older computer system to try to work through the backlog.
It was unclear Friday when the software issue will be fixed.
A timeline might be known at the start of next week but, as for now, no new applications will be accepted using the backup system until Wednesday or later in the week, Otani said. He said staff need time to process applications that already have been submitted, though it’s unclear when pending permits will be approved.
Otani said the county’s information technology staff are meeting with the software vendor Monday.
“We really don’t know until we get with IT,” he said, regarding possible fixes.
As of Friday, only permits that were ready for approval at the time of the glitch had been issued. Nothing else had made it through the review process and the problem is countywide, Otani said.
Approving a permit requires communication between multiple agencies and he said the county doesn’t have a system in place for doing that with only pen and paper. The last time a permit was issued without use of computers was 1996, Otani said.
Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
Before there were computers the excuse was the pencil sharpener is broken.
Computers
are just soooo hard!!!
We need to hire more people (the in-laws) and pay more! more! more!
….we “deserve” a raise for all the issues!
And those people we gave permits to over the past 30 years in Hamburger Hill…
…you’se has got to stop using those septic/cess pools!!!
…..the Feds says we’se made a mistake and YOU must pay!!
…..and you need to pay more for water, police, etc!!
wese have relatives to hire!!
The County’s entire “I.T.” conceptual fabric – not merely the current “moment” reported on here pertaining to a single agency – deserves a Marion Higa-quality audit by someone. The “Efficiency in Government” Commission could tackle it but would likely find it too obtuse to deal with. Really now. We have a local government communication-software-data system strung together by (1) thin-grid, over-energized HELCO (pulses, brown-outs, outages and people rushing fedex replacement parts for burnt-out circuit boards as if it’s an occupation in and of itself) and (2) good ol’ Hawaiian Telcom cables. Glitches every single day, it seems like (exaggeration, yes, but just a little). Can’t find the problems because no one know which circuit board got burnt out in which data base unit in which building of which inter-connected agency, from one event to the next.
Surely, we don’t have to invent the better IT system here. Surely, there are people on the mainland who operate systems in rural counties that have solved these problems. And if a serious audit shows that these constant failures are due to the poor quality power we have on this island -then what? Shrug, and say sorry, as if we would just go fishing instead? Pure, clean and steady power is a critical, can’t-succeed-without-it first step. Like the other local management fiasco, our water well pumps. No backups that actually work, LOL. After that, how the government stitches its data and program together can surely be greatly improved.
Thankfully we don’t get all the government we pay for or we’d be like California, with absolute Tyrant
Democrats dictating your every move. I’m a retired Computer scientist, I could easily design a system that would work, but Politics, Nepotism, and Ohana would not be included and therefore would never be funded. After all Hawaii is a third world nation, that happens to be an American state.
Who the hell runs technology. First driver license issues, now this ….
You know what fixes software problems? Backups.