Three Outages Experienced by I/CAD -- NYC's Dispatch System

WNYC, NBC News and others reported that the NYC Dispatch system, revamped at considerable cost, has experienced more than one interruption since its latest release. In the latest incident, there was a period of 30 minutes during which CSR's had to manually write down caller information and hand-carry it to dispatchers. NBC reported that Wednesday was the first day for the software in its current release to go live.

NYC 911 System Room via NBC News

Software Errors Further Weakened Nuclear Utility's Credibility

How bad is it? That's what Japan -- and worriers worldwide -- asked of its utility, Tokyo Electric Power (TEP) after the disastrous quake and tsunami.  TEP employees no doubt lost family members, and some of them braved unprecedented risks to their own health and safety. No doubt working under pressure and minimum rest, TEP nevertheless had a responsibility to provide accurate reports of groundwater radioactivity, and were forced to rely upon software to deliver those reports.

A NY Times report provided this narrative.

"Tokyo Electric Power said late Thursday that the groundwater near the plant had also been contaminated. The company initially said the radiation was 10,000 times the normal level, then later questioned its own data. It did the same with a report that the level of iodine 131 in seawater near the plant had fallen below 2,000 times the statutory limit, compared with a level of more than 4,000 times the limit on Thursday. On Friday, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said at a news conference that the government had questions about the company’s figures and had asked it to review the data. Tokyo Electric officials said they would recalculate the figures after an error was discovered in a computer program (italics mine). The company has several times issued radioactivity reports only to retract them after experts questioned their validity."

Faulty Algorithms in Test Scoring Could Affect Thousands

While the exact source of the errors has not been disclosed, one suspects a combination of methodological and software errors in two recent Pearson test scoring glitches that incorrectly deprived NYC students of eligibility in gifted programs.

The New York Times reported that:

In its first round of mistakes, Pearson said it did not correctly count students’ ages in calculating their percentile ranking, used incorrect scoring tables and used a faulty formula to combine the two components of the test into one percentile ranking. This time, Mr. Walcott [NYC Schools Chancellor] said, the company factored in an incorrect test date for roughly half the test takers, which skewed their scores because it miscalculated the students’ ages.