I have never worked for the government but sometimes I feel like I do. In January the bank’s email account expired and was deleted. It was not possible to get the exact same id so a new one was requested and tested. Between the ordering, configuration, testing, and just getting it to work took some weeks. Yet to get it installed on production took a downtime and downtime’s occur infrequently. Finally the software was ready to be installed in march but the production downtime was commandeered thus forcing the bank to wait another two months for the next downtime.
Finally the software was installed in may, and so I forgot about this issue. It was a month later when I noticed on the production server that these files were still not being sent out. I tried to follow up, all according to proper channels but never did hear anything back. So one evening I decided to pick up the phone and informally call someone in that department to ask what was going on.
It seems that the person who was in charge of IT in that group had moved to another group internally and as he was the “official” owner of the database it was basically moved to his new group when he got a transfer. So the reason the new email address doesn’t work is now a permission issue because their database was migrated to another group within the company and for security reasons the different groups cannot access each others resources.
It is unclear if the database can be ever be transferred back to the bank despite the fact it is not needed or even wanted by its new group. It also may not be possible to get a new database as the company is trying to get rid of Lotus Notes yet the new email solution has been put on hold due to other technical difficulties and no budget to continue with the replacement.
Thus it is now about eight months after the initial problems and the situation has not only gotten worse but there is no real end in sight.