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Ohio Official Docked Vacation Time For Stolen Tape

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-beach-for-you dept.

Lucas123 writes "The missing tape, stolen from an intern's car, contained data on all 64,467 state employees, 19,388 former employees and 47,245 Ohio taxpayers. The state believes the incident will cost them $3 million. So after four months of deliberation, the Ohio Department of Administrative Services announced today that they decided to take a week's vacation away from Jerry Miller, their payroll team leader and the guy in charge of the missing data."

12 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. So his salary must be... by patman600 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, if this cost them $3 million, and they took a week's vacation away, his yearly salary must be $156 million. I think I know where I should be looking for a job now.

    1. Re:So his salary must be... by Gordonjcp · · Score: 5, Funny

      which means you very well could end up earning a salary in turkish lire, if you're not careful

      Or worse, US Dollars...

  2. The guy's damn lucky. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Imagine what would have happened to him if he'd been busted sharing a couple of dozen copyrighted songs online. Probably would've had his sick-leave cancelled too.

  3. Is that all they are going to do? by MadJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Take away 1 week of vacation time?
    If I screw up that bad at my work, I'd be facing a discharge...

    --
    80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
    1. Re:Is that all they are going to do? by ritesonline · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What more do you want?

      Sounds like the guy's a long timer who was doing his job and now has to carry the can to protect his pension.

      From the article: "The tape was pilfered in June from the car of an intern responsible for carrying data used by the Ohio state government's computer systems...described Miller as a "stellar longtime DAS employee" and said he has been forthright in acknowledging his role in the "management glitch" pertaining to the stolen backup tape."

      This wasn't some guy who took a company laptop home to play games, it was his responsibility and no extra security was provided for him to do his job. Would you like everyone else robbed at work to forfeit leave or be sacked? The "management glitch" is probably that his bosses wouldn't stump up for secure transport of the tapes.

    2. Re:Is that all they are going to do? by HeWhoMustNotBeNamed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I worked in the same division as Jerry years ago. At the time he was silo'd (not his choice) in a $40 million failed attempt to replace the cobol-assembler payroll system with an "off the shelf" Dunn & Bradstreet mainframe product. The project was called HRMS. It went on for something like 18 years. Each year the folks several positions above Jerry kept pushing for more funding to get it completed. For 15 years they were "just a few more months" away from completion. Along came Y2K and in mid 1998, the external auditors finally got the message above to the cabinet that come 2000 the payroll system would cease to function. Due to HRMS always being 6 months from completion, any budget that was tied to maintenance of the cobol system got sucked away into the HRMS void. Jerry would often just smile to our questions about the status of the HRMS, he wanted to say what wasn't right about it, but kept quiet to keep his job.

      So, in 1998 with backs up against the wall and through some heroic effort on the part of Bob Cruse's staff, the cobol system was given enough resources including myself to remediate the system.

      You would think that in 2000 they would have pulled the plug; nope, and that's a reason I left. Instead it was 2001 or 2002 that they finally called HRMS suck cost. Jerry had fewer options being a state life'r; to get his pension he needed to stay for 30 yrs.

      Immediately following the disolution of HRMS, they took the same architects involved in HRMS and tossed in additional incompitent pointy hairs and created the OAKS project.

      My former boss was added to the group and one of his backup strategies was to take our network backs home on tape. Sound familiar? We secretly revolted and instead sent them to another state office.

      That is what I know about Jerry and now I'm going to guess and say this went above Jerry and he's taking the fall.

  4. Re:Wrong punishment by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Without vacation he will make more mistakes

    It's okay. He's from the government.

  5. Gee. by skulgnome · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder how much those four months of deliberation cost them. All that work just for some petty punishment. (of course you yanks only get like six days of paid vacation a year, so maybe it's harsher from your perspective, lol.)

  6. Some quick considerations... by physicsphairy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    First of all, you can't fine him "$3 million", (a) because he couldn't pay it, (b) because then you probably have to pay people close to that amount just to convince them the financial risk of the job was worth taking.

    Also, it's evident it wasn't 100% on him. The data was stolen from an intern's car. He bears the indirect culpability of not encrypting it, not backing it, trusting the intern, whatever. It's natural to feel that "heads should roll" but why should the onus of all this fall necessarily on him? (Well, maybe it all should--I'm just going off the blurb in the summary.)

    On the other side of it, a week's vacation time is ridiculous, whether or not he's at fault. If he is, well, there should be a real punishment. If he's not, it's fairly idiotic to slap him around just for the show of doing so.

    And how much did the four-month long investigation cost? If it was more than a week of this guy's vacation time... yeah, well, that was another win for the taxpayers, wasn't it?

    The way it should have worked is that there should have been a clearly defined set of rules, a clearly defined set of responsibilities, and a clearly defined set of repercussions. When employee X neglected responsibility Y, he should have already been aware that Z would be the punishment, and Z should have been what happened immediately afterward. You might need a four month investigation to find the harddrive thief, but you shouldn't need more than a week to handle violations of internal policies.

    --
    When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
  7. Re:Isn't.. by baileydau · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isn't the company responsible for negligence carried out by an employee in the course of his duties...


    Yes they are ... That is with respect to any external parties that may have been harmed.

    Even though the company is liable for any negligence, they have the option of internal sanctions against any negligent employee.

    That's why he only got docked 1 weeks holiday, not the entire $3M
    --
    Ever stop to think ... and forget to start again?
  8. What are you going to do next... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Announcer: "Jerry Miller, you just caused the loss of $3 million for the state of Ohio, and negatively impacted the lives of more than 100,000 people. What are you going to do next?"

    Miller: "I am apparently NOT going to Disney World."

  9. Re:The guy's Union Boss says... by Dragonslicer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks like the Union is staffing IT security now. Who was doing it before, the Confederacy?