Virginia governor wants investigation of Northrop IT failure

Northrop Grumman apologized on Thursday for the network failure that caused disruptions to more than twenty Virginia state offices during the past week while Governor Bob McDonnell called for an investigation into the outages.

McDonnell called for an independent review by an outside vendor and called the outage "unacceptable." The problem has been traced to a pair of malfunctioning storage devices from subcontractor EMC Corp., which knocked almost 500 of the state's servers offline.

That failure lead to more than a week of network outages for some government agencies, particularly the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is expecting a 45,000 person backlog of applicants needing to renew their drivers licenses.

"This recent computer failure is unacceptable. I look forward to learning exactly how this occurred, how we can prevent such a disruption in the future and how we can improve responsiveness and data reclamation if future interruptions occur," McDonnell said.

"I have spoken personally with Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush. I expressed to him that extended lapses in state computer services was an unacceptable hardship on our citizens and employees. I made clear that I expected the best around-the-clock recovery efforts possible in order to reclaim and restore all missing files and data."

Northrop issued a statement Thursday announcing all state agencies are reconnected and apologizing for the disruption.

"Northrop Grumman deeply regrets the disruption and inconvenience this has caused state agencies and Virginia citizens," said vice president Linda Mills. "The disruption to the business of state government has ended, but our efforts to examine the factors that contributed to the initial problem and the lengthy restoration of service is just beginning."

Mills said her firm supports McDonnell’s independent review of the incident and said Northrop will reimburse the Commonwealth "for the reasonable costs of an assessment," calling it "an essential and responsible measure that will strengthen our ability to protect against future issues."

Virginia chief information officer Sam Nixon said earlier this week that Northrop will likely be forced to pay a six-figure fine that will factor in the costs incurred while addressing the outage.

Despite the failure, Mills defended Northrop's $2.4 billion outsourcing contract with the commonwealth, calling it a "bold course" and the first project of its kind.

"The partnership has experienced its share of obstacles, not unusual with large transformation programs, but with this modernized system Virginia and her citizens should find themselves years ahead of other states with the service provided by its IT infrastructure," Mills said.