Xerox "Routine Backup Test" Leave 17 States Without Food Stamps

An anonymous reader writes "People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Xerox announced late in the evening that access has been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported. 'Restarting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality,' spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email. An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, she said. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown."

Comments

Words that should never be spoken

[ThatAblaze]

"[A politician] underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown."

These words should never have to be said.

This is exactly why testing backups is necessary

[dwhitaker]

Backups don't always work - that's why you test them. This time they did not work - much better that you experience problems when you anticipate them than when everything else is going wrong, too. It's unfortunate that the system was down, but it seems they got it back up in a reasonably quick time frame. Moreover, merchants are supposed to have manual means of recording EBT payments for just such a scenario.

k-ROGER that!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Hahaha I was walking thru Kroger's yesterday and they kept announcing over the speakers "We cannot accept EBT today because our computers are having problems."

Fail-safe

[girlintraining]

People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday,

Why is it that a convenience -- our credit cards, are able to weather a failure like this by simply allowing all purchases, but our food stamp cards simply stop working? Credit card systems are, at every level, designed to cope with a failure by simply authorizing the purchase. Only a very small number of transactions would have been failed anyway for insufficient funds, etc., and these are reconciled when that part of the system is restored to service... meaning there's very little loss to the provider for this.

For that matter, if they've decided to design the system in this fashion, where were the redundancies? If a routine backup can result in failure on this scale, then it begs the question of where and how the backup of the actual systems, not just the data, got overlooked.

Re:Fail-safe

[dwhitaker]

One of the news articles mentioned that merchants were supposed to record transactions manually and allow purchases up to $50. Not ideal, and not the same as allowing all purchases, but it is a provision of the system that is supposed to ensure people aren't deprived food and necessities during a short outage. Now, whether retailers actually followed protocol is an entirely different matter (and one that does have implications for the way the system is run).

Re: Fail-safe

[Mabhatter]

That's because the EBT cards function like Debit cards, not credit cards. So they need to contact the account to verify funds every time.

They could make it some other way, but we wouldn't want people cheating the government by getting one extra cart of groceries early, would we. All because we didn't program the computer to check the cards balance every time.

Re:Fail-safe

[girlintraining]

One of the news articles mentioned that merchants were supposed to record transactions manually and allow purchases up to $50

Due to the government shutdown, I cannot provide primary source data such as would be normally available from the USDA, etc. In lieu of that, the links provided represent the best non-authoritative sources available at this time.

The average household size is 2.48. Source.
The average person spends about $70 a week on food Source
76% of people on food stamps are disabled, elderly, or children. Source
Around 44 million Americans are on food stamps now*

* [Couldn't find credible source; Estimated from multiple sources]

This would mean that the average weekly trip to the grocery store, for an average household, would be $173.60. If your number is correct, then the government has opted to allow vendors to 28% of a family's food to be processed. Also according to the article, this outage may last up to three days.

Now here's the thing; A lot of those families live 'paycheck to paycheck'. Even if it is welfare; They don't have a fully stocked pantry. If they don't buy food today, a lot of them don't eat. And most people go shopping on the weekend. Your quoted $50 means the average family runs out of food in just under two days. I was unable to find any citation to back your assertion that they were allowing purchases as long as they were under $50 as well, so I have my doubts as to its validity. Anecdotally, two of my friends who have food stamps in the midwestern area reported being unable to purchase any food or remove any amount of cash benefits from their accounts.

So either the situation is 'rather bad' -- 1 in 8 Americans will be going hungry for at least one day this week on average. Or it's 'very bad', in that 1 in 8 Americans will be going hungry for three days. And possibly longer -- many of those people use public transportation or arranged rides to get to the grocery store every week. Especially the elderly and disabled. These rides are picked out weeks ahead of time. For them, they could be looking at not eating for a week or more.

So I return to my original point: Why is it that credit card companies, who offer a convenience, do this, but our government, which provides something that in a very literal sense is life or death to some people, does not? There is no answer to that question that I come away with that makes this look like anything other than criminal neglect of a vulnerable population.

Re:This is exactly why testing backups is necessar

[amiga3D]

The local Walmart was lacking in any backup method. They had at least 50 buggies packed full of food sitting around the registers and a lot of pissed off customers. Glad they got it back up, I don't look forward to that riot.

Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS

[Anonymous Coward]

There Are 3 Unemployed People Competing For Every Job Opening

Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS

[Rick Zeman]

It's hardly fair to expect people to get a job just to eat. Everyone is entitled to food, shelter and reasonable transportation. It say's so in the US Constitution.

It does? Where? Since when?? The closest my US Constitution comes is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Re:This is exactly why testing backups is necessar

[Rick Zeman]

Backups don't always work - that's why you test them. This time they did not work - much better that you experience problems when you anticipate them than when everything else is going wrong, too. It's unfortunate that the system was down, but it seems they got it back up in a reasonably quick time frame. Moreover, merchants are supposed to have manual means of recording EBT payments for just such a scenario.

Exactly. Imagine a more catastrophic meltdown down the road and all of the Nancy Naysayers saying, "WhyoWhy didn't anyone test it?"

Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me remind you all of Senator Obama's words from 2006 regarding the raising of the debt ceiling. He voted against raising the debt ceiling at that time.

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally."

Source

How true are those words? I only wish President Obama still believed what he did as Senator.

Re:Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling

[Ksevio]

However, when Obama was a senator, the administration had turned a budget surplus into a budget deficit. That was the result of reckless spending on tax cuts and wars.

That contrasts with the current administration which was given a large deficit to start with (made worse by declining tax revenues due to the recession) that has cut government spending.

Re:Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling

[aardvarkjoe]

Let me remind you all of Senator Obama's words from 2006 regarding the raising of the debt ceiling. He voted against raising the debt ceiling at that time.

The debt ceiling really isn't related to the government shutdown. The media (and certain politicians) are trying to conflate the two -- and it seems that they're succeeding, because most people don't seem to realize that there's a difference.

Re:Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling

[clarkkent09]

|Congress controls the spending. Btw, "Bush's wars" propaganda is getting boring. Democrats overwhelmingly supported them (unanimously in case of Afghanistan) and it was Clinton admin that set the stage for Iraq war with regime change policy (Iraq Liberation Act 1998). You can argue whether it was right or wrong but you can't blame just one side for it - they all had the same intelligence. Same applies with the current administration. Would they really cut the spending if Republicans weren't fighting for it all along.

Re:Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling

[JimCanuck]

Like Libya was avoided? Give us a break.

This can get scary:

[Hartree]

In the late 1990s, the company I worked for was one of many processing EBT card transactions for grocery stores in New Mexico when they first switched to it from paper food stamps. The bank that was the approving authority for them (the next higher link up the chain from us) had a system problem and had been down for about 45 minutes.

I got a call from a very stressed sounding manager at a store in a bad neighborhood of Albuquerque and explained that the outage was statewide, and I'd already called the next highest level.

His response: "You don't understand! These people carry guns."

I really didn't have a good answer for that one, but certainly sympathized.

They later changed the rules so that when the statewide system was down, they could approve it at the store and then take out any overuse from later payments. That got abused, but it made some store managers a lot less nervous.

Re:This can get scary:

[Hartree]

Obvious trolling is obvious.

Regardless of who it is, try telling someone "Sorry, but your kids are going to go hungry tonight." The response won't always be a fun one.

Re:This is exactly why testing backups is necessar

[dwhitaker]

Risk exists, and appropriate management of it is how the world moves forward. I'm not privy to the inner-workings of Xerox, and it is entirely possible that they were not following best practices and that a substantial portion of this is due to operator error. However, even routine tests have risk associated with them. My point is that immediately blaming Xerox is not a good reaction: making and testing backups is an effort to mitigate risks (with much worse outcomes). If minor problems arise from time to time in the course of protecting against a larger future risk, that should be accepted. How the short-term and long-term risks offset each other is a discussion for the 17 states, the USDA, and Xerox.

Generator transfer switch test?

[Jayfar]

With various reports referring to it as a power outage and others as a test of backup systems, I'd guess this was a generator load test where something went wrong with the transfer switch. We do those off-hours monthly at the data center where I work and, being the nervous sort, I'm grateful they usually coincide with one of my days off, although ours have gone smoothly.

Re:This is exactly why testing backups is necessar

[Bite The Pillow]

Did you just pull random speculation out of your ass? If the system works, the card gets used. Most people on the registers are not going to know about any backup system. Want to use your card? swipe it first. Doesn't work? swipe it. I need to know what the problem is so I can ask my manager.

Manager comes over. What happens when you swipe it?

Now, if you're talking about friend of the cashier, that would raise lots of red flags to have piles of swipes work, followed by a single transaction by the friend. It would work once.

What happens after the data is reconciled for manual backups? If you exceed your limit or the card is not authorized for you, some accounting will find you.

Xerox asked retailers to revert to a manual system, meaning customers could spend up to $50 until the system was restored.

That sounds like a reasonable compromise, once everyone is aware the system actually is down.

Smith said that typically when the cards aren't working retailers can call a backup phone number to find out how much money customers have available in their account. But that information also was unavailable because of the outage, so customers weren't able to use their cards.

That addresses this for most cases, so you don't get fraud.

cashier Eliza Shook said dozens of customers at Corner Grocery had to put back groceries when the cards failed Saturday because they couldn't afford to pay for the food.

Sounds like they didn't just let people buy whatever they wanted, because the plan b was down. Now, why did you waste our time posting horseshit?

Re:This is exactly why testing backups is necessar

[roc97007]

The local Walmart was lacking in any backup method. They had at least 50 buggies packed full of food sitting around the registers and a lot of pissed off customers. Glad they got it back up, I don't look forward to that riot.

Ye gods, the crowd could get ugly...

Too late.

Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS

[roc97007]

There Are 3 Unemployed People Competing For Every Job Opening

But is this a measure of people competing for jobs in good faith, or is it merely the number of people unemployed divided by the number of jobs? From TFA, I see it's the latter.

This doesn't take into account people like, for instance, my sister, who hasn't worked since the mid-nineties and is grimly determined to do whatever it takes to remain on government assistance for the remainder of her life. Justified by "I had bad things happen to me in my youth; society owes me a comfortable living in the manner and place of my choosing as a result."

I'm pretty sure she's not the only one.

Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS

[MightyYar]

It is exactly because natural rights are violable that it is important to protect them.

Your "right to life" is not a directive to the rest of us to keep you alive, it is a directive to the rest of us not to actively try to kill you.

Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS

[dkleinsc]

But is this a measure of people competing for jobs in good faith, or is it merely the number of people unemployed divided by the number of jobs? From TFA, I see it's the latter.

1. To be counted as unemployed, you must be actively looking for a job. If you aren't, you are officially a "discouraged worker" and removed from the unemployment rolls. So, for example, if your sister hasn't worked since 1995, an hasn't even been trying to get a job, she isn't one of those 3 people trying to fill a single opening.

2. Even if, say, 1/3 of people who are counted as unemployed are really bums trying to mooch off the government, that still means that half of the people legitimately looking for work are coming up empty.

It was even worse a few years ago, when the ration was more like 5 unemployed people to 1 job. In that situation, you could be demonstrably good at your profession, and still not be hired because they could get the best-of-the-best for a pittance in that economy.

Yes, it does

[rsilvergun]

you increase the top earner's rates on income over a certain amount. In the 50s and 60s we had the highest growth in real wages and middle class incomes the country (maybe even the species) has ever seen with a 90% top tax bracket. How? Because that 90% wasn't a flat "Give us 90% of your income" it was "90 % over 1 Million" or about $9 million in todays money. So if you made over $9 million dollars in a SINGLE YEAR then you paid 90% of that to the gov't. This kept wealth inequality in check and forced top earners to really work for that money over $9 million. If you wanted to be filthy, stinking rich you really had to work at it (people still did). Meanwhile gov't programs redistributed the wealth. Maybe not evenly, but it's better than phoney job creators hording it and holding up human progress by sitting on their fat rears with all the money in the world...

Re:Yes, it does

[dbraden]

I have never understood how anyone could morally justify confiscating 90% of someone else's income for income over a certain amount. I don't care if your intentions are altruistic or not, you simply don't have the right to make that choice for me. If you want to spend that money, go earn it yourself and spend it however you want, and I'll do the same.

Re:Yes, it does

[thesupraman]

So, if I get you right you are claiming that taxes they take are all used for services that improve the lives of the people paying those taxes directly?

Wow, that must be an amazing utopia to live in, it sure as hell doesnt work like that around here..

Re:Yes, it does

[Bite The Pillow]

They normally don't sit on the money. Typically it goes into traditional investments, which are money drains. Some goes to venture capital, which benefits the economy. Some is a measure of worth based on their holdings of a company in which they hold majority share.

The last means they are determining how employee futures go. Which was a good thing until the short term profit scene hit.

So there are some fat cats sitting on money or making bad decisions, and many controlling or supporting business well. You know history but not economics, and would make a terrible millionaire. 75%, C-

Re:Yes, it does

[Redmancometh]

Because those services use SUCH huge amounts of FEDERAL tax dollars. Of course how could we be so blind.

Go read a graph:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fivethirtyeight-gov1/16fivethirtyeight-gov1-blog480.jpg

Most of that money goes to entitlement programs, military contractors, and the NSA (if the $1 trillion budget is a real thing then they cost more than police, fire, etc)
You'll notice "infrastructure and services" is combined into one to encompass everything you said. So yeah, the spending breakdown is why I think more taxes are a bad idea. The vast majority goes to entitlment programs I don't support, military spending I don't support, and an agency that spies on me for a living.

So what?

[rsilvergun]

I've known people on gov't assistance. It's a few hundred dollars a month and you have to be making about half the poverty line to get it. If you're sister is on gov't assistance for real then there's something wrong with her. I don't mean that as an insult. I mean there really is something wrong, and she needs the help. You don't get enough from the gov't to live, you get enough so that if your family is giving you a lot of help you can just barely eat.

Is this an astro turfer or something? I'd like to believe noone is this much of a jerk in real life...

Re:So what?

[roc97007]

I've known people on gov't assistance. It's a few hundred dollars a month and you have to be making about half the poverty line to get it. If you're sister is on gov't assistance for real then there's something wrong with her. I don't mean that as an insult. I mean there really is something wrong, and she needs the help. You don't get enough from the gov't to live, you get enough so that if your family is giving you a lot of help you can just barely eat.

Is this an astro turfer or something? I'd like to believe noone is this much of a jerk in real life...

We've talked about this in various Slashdot threads. Yes, there is something supposedly wrong with her. My sister purports to have "agoraphobia". This means that she can't go shopping, can't hold down a job, can't drive. Open spaces purport to cause panic attacks. Moreover, she purports to have various medical conditions, including crippling arthritis and a heart condition, which prevent her from working. (This is not the only way she works the system -- more on that later.)

Yet, she has a recreational vehicle with which she takes camping trips, and a 4-wheeler with which she joyrides out in the desert in Nevada. But these are parked out of sight when her social worker visits her single-wide, at which time she uses a walker to get around. Oops, scratch that, she now has a motorized wheelchair acquired at government expense. When she's not under scrutiny, she doesn't need any of these things. (I know this from personal observation.) Yes, it's open fraud. But so far she has gotten away with it. (I pay my way, and she has stuff I could never afford... You know, just never mind.)

She owes money to basically everyone, has no intention to pay any of it back, and has developed coping skills to avoid same. Her house has been in default (or in and out of default; I don't follow it that closely) since at least the late nineties. She's been on the edge of repossession since at least the turn of the century, but somehow the house never quite gets repossessed.

Yes, I'm perfectly willing to stipulate that there is something wrong with her. What is wrong with her is that she has decided that there is no moral reason not to game the system. And by "the system" I mean several systems -- various types of government care, and the collective ineptitude of various companies in trying to get their money back from her. We haven't even talked about how she managed to acquire a foster child, and what a fiasco that's been.

A few years back she talked our elderly mother into putting her (my sister) on the lease for the family homestead, ("for tax purposes") and promptly took out a loan against her own mother's house. Not to pay off her charge cards, or anything practical, but to take a cruise and buy herself stuff. That started a legal battle that she eventually lost. After several complicated transactions and some expense the house is free of the debt and I'm the sole owner. (My mother still lives there, and I will call the local sheriff if her daughter ever shows up.) Since then, my sister calls me on random days at 3:00 AM to cuss me out. She knows that I'm on call and have to pick up the phone. Eventually she gets tired of me hanging up and I'm good for two or three more weeks. (I also have a drunken aunt that calls me in the middle of the night, but that's a different story.)

The point is, just because someone is on government assistance doesn't mean they deserve it. I'm sorry if that bursts everyone's bubble, but it's true. Sometimes, all it means is that they found a way in, and decided that getting a check from the government beats the hell out of actually working for a living.

...and I freely admit that my outlook is colored by my own experiences. But I have a hard time believing that my sister is unique.

...and if you think this type of fraud couldn't possibly happen, that there must be checks and balances in place to avoid this sort of

Re:So what?

[XcepticZP]

What is this Tea Party I keep you Americans talking about? From your post, I can see that you're implying that it is somehow majority composed of people that need government assistance. Yet, the first thing mentioned about this "party" on wikipedia is that is it is a "political movement that is primarily known for advocating a reduction in the U.S. national debt and federal budget deficit by reducing U.S. government spending and taxes." Are you telling me that a group that advocates the reduction of taxes and spending is one that is also highly dependent on that spending staying high so that they can get their "welfare" check?

If you're right, then might I suggest you go update/edit that particular Wikipedia article? Seeing as you know something crucial about the Tea Party that the rest of the internet doesn't. Oh, and don't forget to add a dication/link for your edit.

Re:So what?

[roc97007]

You are my new favorite person.

Re: GET A JOB YA BUMS

[roc97007]

Luckily, she's a statistical minority. She's only your sister, not mine.

Agreed. I wouldn't wish her on anyone. But I'm not so sure people like her, (not just her) are a statistical minority. I'd like to think so.

Nobody paid those rates, dumbass

[acoustix]

Yes, the top rate was 90%. BUT NOBODY PAID 90%!!! There were all sorts of write offs, loop holes, etc and people paid close to what we paid today.

Blame their copies

[J'raxis]

Maybe they can blame their buggy copiers. Didn't this used to be a quality company?

Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS

[Smauler]

I'll just make a note here... Anyone who makes a fucking party political issue about a story which is not a party political issue, I'm going to mod down as offtopic from now on in. I don't care whether you're replying to someone, if you're commenting on a topic which has no fucking relevance to party politics, you're the fucking dipshit.

It might help if the Dems quit importing competition for all those unemployed.

Who the fuck modded this AC "insightful" in a story about Xerox. Fucking kill these comments.

Whereas PRESIDENT Obama...

[Anonymous Coward]

tried to drag us into conflicts in Libya, Egypt, and a completely bone-headed Syrian intervention that would have had us in a face-off with Putin over something Putin is every bit as committed to (Syria and his naval base there) as Obama is to "Obamacare"...... and all while DOUBLING the nation's debt.

Oh, and by the way, there never was a Clinton-era budget surplus; Politicians in both parties (Democrats AND "establishment" Republicans) love to pretend they have been fiscally responsible by simply leaving things "off the books". The so-Called Clinton surplus numbers were only projections and only valid if you pretended some of the biggest items on the books (Social Security and Medicare) had no future obligation (and therefore no need to actually save/invest the money coming into the programs, freeing that money up for current spending). Corporate executives who do their accounting this way (not including wall st bankers with Washington lobbyists) go to jail.

Bush inherited a mess too... a recession, the popping of the first internet bubble ("pets.com" anyone???) and years of no American response to terrorism accompanied by legal blocks preventing intel agencies sharing data with eachother.

EVERY president inherits things and some inherit very bad messes; Reagan inherited a crippled military, double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, gas lines (people lined-up around the block to buy gas and only allowed to buy every-other day depending on your license plate#) double-digit unemployment...AND a Democrat congress that used the debt ceiling and the budgets to TRY to block his every action. Obama is LYING when he says the current situation has never been faced by a previous president - I remember it quite well. By the time Reagan ran for re-election he had every one of the economic indicators turned around and things were so good his campaign theme was "morning in America". Obama stepped into a much better situation than Reagan inherited by EVERY measure but the "mainstream"/Democrat press runs interference for him and he has become dependent upon their support; he's had FIVE YEARS and we actually have fewer full-time workers now than we did when he was sworn in. Oh, and Obama was no innocent bystander to the 2008 meltdown, he was a senator in the Democrat-run senate at the time which (working in concert with the Democrat-run House) wrote the laws and budgets in 2007 and 2008 after they pronounced Bush's proposals "dead on arrival"

It does not matter what you inherit..... what matters is what you make of it.

Walmart Emptied Out

[BetaDays]

Check this out 2 Walmarts got pretty cleaned out when they let people use their ebts as if there was no limit on them. Watch the video it's amazing.

http://www.ksla.com/story/23679489/walmart-shelves-in-springhill-mansfield-cleared-in-ebt-glitch

Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS

[psithurism]

1) No, you have to appear to be looking for a job. I've known many unemployed people and appearing to be looking for a job is pretty easy. For example I recall the requirement in my state being something like, apply for 3 jobs a week, which is easy, apply for the same four that rejected you last week, the extra job is in case one of those wants to move forward toward offering you a job in which case you don't report it and find another place that wont hire you next week. These were of course my more educated friends who wanted all their paperwork to be truthful and verifiable; they reportedly heard from other unemployed folks that you could just make everything up.

Of course, that's talking about unemployment benefits, there are other programs you can continue to take advantage, but in different ways and I suspect that GPP's sister is not applying for jobs and therefore correctly not counted as you pointed out.

2) Regardless of the ratios, as long as we offer aid, some people undeserving people will take advantage of it. Even if there are more moochers than deservers, we either have to accept the fact of moochers or obliterate the system, because moochers are far craftier than the costs to keep them out of the system.