MSPB suffers IT failure, says hack is not to blame
Merit Systems Protection Board data from as far back as November 2014 could be missing.
The Merit Systems Protection Board suffered a system-wide network failure that could result in the permanent loss of some agency data.
The MSPB has experienced a loss of data on its servers and data stored via virtual desktop interface from VMWare. Data as far back as November 2014 could be missing. Efforts are underway to recover data from backup tapes. However, more recent network information going back to late May could be unrecoverable, according to emails obtained by FCW. The outage affects all 219 MSPB employees.
The outage "was not the result of any external cyber intrusion or hacking," according to an MSBP statement provided to FCW.
The agency website, MSPB.gov, has been down sporadically. People doing business with the agency, which deals with cases of federal employees appealing dismissal, suspension, pension claims and other such matters, have been told that their electronic filing service e-appeal.gov is down.
Because of the disruption, people filing with MSPB will be eligible for extensions, provided they state that the outage was a cause of a missed deadline.
It's not clear when e-appeal will be back online. MSPB said that documents submitted electronically by appellants or counsel in open cases were probably not lost.
Employees have been able to access MSPB systems via the Internet version of VMWare, but not through the desktop client. The outage began on June 30, the same day that MSPB switched all employees to the virtual desktop and deactivated its virtual private network connection.