Excuses, Excuses

Computerworld - It's incredible -- that's the only word for it. In May, the Justice Department said it couldn't copy what's supposed to be public information in one of its databases because "implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major data loss, which would be devastating. In addition to running the risk of data loss, this is a new feature request which would be costly and take a considerable amount of time to implement."
Yes, this Justice Department bureaucrat actually said that copying a database could destroy the data and produce an unfixable crash. And that it would be costly and take time.
And we've been worried about Sarbanes-Oxley. Silly us.
Details of this database problem are sketchy. All we know for sure is what's in a letter to the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington watchdog group. In the letter, the Justice Department denies the group's request for a copy of the government's database of foreign lobbyist activity under the Freedom of Information Act.
The database exists, and it's supposed to be publicly available. In fact, Justice is legally required to generate a report from it for Congress twice a year. But the most recent report was for the second half of 2002.
Since then, the database has been undergoing a "technology upgrade," according to the letter. As a result, the database can't be copied until December without risking a devastating data loss and a crash that can't be fixed.
What could possibly be better news to overworked, deadline-pressed IT shops? The Justice Department officially believes in databases that can be destroyed just by being copied.
And Justice also officially believes that's a perfectly good excuse for failing to comply with an information disclosure law.
So, if we can't manage to meet the deadlines or generate the reports required by Sarbanes-Oxley and other new laws and regulations that require access to databases, we know we'll get a sympathetic hearing at Justice -- right? Well, won't we?

And there are a few other things we'd like to know. Such as:
• Who is this brilliant contractor that leaves an organization unable to perform tasks it's legally required to do for between six months and two years?
• If we hire this contractor for our Sarbanes-Oxley overhauls and our e-mail and instant messaging repository projects, will we be able to use the same copying-the-data-could-destroy-it excuse successfully?
• Will our users believe us when we tell them accessing the data they need will destro