Is someone at the National Archives and Records Administration ignoring your email messages? Blame the computers! Actually, it's the servers.
The National Archives and Records Administration is scrambling to keep its e-mail service from breaking down because of faulty network equipment, according to a notice published on the Federal Business Opportunities website at https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=4b7c80a1e6c5e8a7d61b83a1c3eb30d8&tab=core&_cview=0.
More than 1,200 NARA employees no longer have regular access to their e-mail, the notice states, and daylong outages have hobbled the Office of General Counsel and other divisions. Even the Office of the Archivist has dealt with diminished services.
“This is resulting in lost productivity agencywide and directly impacting the archivist of the United States’ ability to perform critical work functions,” according to the notice.
To fix the problem, NARA needs to replace network equipment manufactured by Hewlett-Packard that connects HP blade servers and the agency’s storage-area network. NARA has been attempting to purchase replacement equipment for some time but one of the parts, an adapter card, is not compliant with the Trade Agreements Act, which requires the government to purchase products manufactured in the United States or another approved country.
“NARA’s inability to procure the necessary HP equipment has resulted in an ever-expanding deterioration of e-mail service,” the notice states. “Simply stated, absent the HP replacement parts, the NARA network cannot once again become a fully functioning e-mail system.”
NARA has not yet predicted when full email service will be restored.
