Dallas County Administration System Failure

Running Head: Dallas County Administration Power Outage and Its Effects

Jacqualon Moody

Dr. Collins

Texas A&M University – Central Texas

Dallas County Administrative Power Outage

Information systems have become the present day basis for carrying out daily operations in a business. Additionally for most establishments, the continued existence and attainability of certain objectives are strongly influenced by the utilization of information systems (Laudon & Laudon, 2010). In the present day, businesses use information systems for several major objective, among which are operational excellence, improved decision making, and day to day survival (Laudon & Laudon, 2010). This report identifies a practical account of crucial nature of information systems and its importance to day to day survival for business operations.

Affected Systems

On June 1, 2010, Dallas County Administrative offices lost complete utilization of its computer operating system, due to major rupture in the water main. High leveled water entered the basement of the Dallas County Records Building, which housed the power supply of the fifth floor computer mainframe. That mainframe stored vital information, for example, marriage licenses, jail records of residents in the Dallas/ Fort Worth region (“Flooded Wallops Dallas County Government Computers”, 2010). With the flooding of these critical information systems, officials were obligated to close the data center which affected most of the county government operations.

Specifically speaking, The Dallas County Records Building accommodates many county departments, including the county clerk's office, the auditor, the county treasurer, purchasing, human resources and the tax office. Furthermore, the Dallas County's criminal justice system was majorly affected by the outage (“Flooded Wallops Dallas County Government Computers”, 2010).

Events leading to Outage

Roughly,...