Rogue Sys Admin Still Haunts San Francisco - Page 2

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It's all about money

Childs had been hired by a previous chief operations officer, Dana Hom, now a computer consultant, the San Francisco Chronicle said, so the IT department had no control over his hire. And money was tight, so staff were heavily worked and it was difficult to ensure staff redundancy as Smith suggested.

"It's been difficult for the past few years, and we're glad for the money we were able to get based on the economy and the budget shortfalls the city and county have faced over the years," Vinson said. "We never designed the system for one person to have sole access," he added.

The city's network engineers are rotated from project to project, but Childs somehow got rotated less than the others. This will change. "We're going to make sure that there's the necessary checks and balances to make sure no one person has sole access," Vinson said.

Vinson could not say when the system will be fully functional because "we're still going through remediation." Despite this, "We feel confident that we have control of our fiber-optic network," he averred.

Childs appears in court again Sept. 24. His case is being handled by Assistant District Attorney Conrad Del Rosario of the San Francisco DA office's special prosecutions division. Erica Derryck, deputy communications director of the DA's office, declined to say anything because "this is a pending case, and I'm not at liberty to comment on any pending case."