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Dallas data loss report reveals IT worker was not trained for the job

A photograph picturing the Dallas City Hall building in the background and a tree in the foreground.
Keren Carri贸n
/
四虎影院
Dallas City Hall

A new report about the City of Dallas' massive data loss says its deletion by a city technician appears to be accidental.

The Dallas IT worker was fired last year after deleting millions of important Dallas police files. The files included photos, videos, audio, notes and other evidence collected for police department cases. The city was able to recover roughly 3 terabytes of data the more than 23 terabytes that were deleted.

The report by the law firm Kirkland & Ellis found that the 鈥渢echnician failed to properly copy data from the existing cloud-based storage systems to the newly implemented City Hall servers.鈥 And then the worker failed to check if copies of the data that was moved existed elsewhere. Because the data also was not properly copied after the transfer to the City Hall servers, it was no longer recoverable.

Dallas鈥 IT department previously said that loss data included more than 17,000 Dallas County District Attorney鈥檚 Office cases.

The IT employee didn't have enough training to do the job, according to the report. And his actions appeared 鈥渢o have been based on his flawed understanding of the City鈥檚 backup and archiving platform.鈥

The report also found that there wasn鈥檛 鈥渁ny evidence that the backup technician had malicious intent or criminal purpose in deleting the data.鈥

No one else was fired has been fired for the data loss. Dallas鈥 IT department released a report last year stating that the data loss was the result of poor management, supervision and an attempt to save money.

Dallas City Council members will discuss the report's findings and recommendations at a the Ad Hoc Committee on General Investigating and Ethics next Tuesday.

Read the full report:

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Got a tip? Alejandra Martinez is a corps member for 四虎影院. Email Alejandra at amartinez@kera.org. You can follow Alejandra on Twitter

Alejandra Martinez is a reporter for 四虎影院 and The Texas Newsroom through Report for America (RFA). She's covering the impact of COVID-19 on underserved communities and the city of Dallas.