Tuesday, February 05, 2013
Hawaii state library website and services down—apparently no one renewed the domain registration
by Larry Geller
The notice posted on what was the Hawaii State Library website is pretty clear—the domain registration expired yesterday (2/4/2013).
Now, the state is notoriously slow to pay its bills, sometimes owing contractors money for jobs completed many months ago. Did the state just fail to pay its bill to GoDaddy.com?
A call to Vernon Tam, listed on the registration as the person responsible, went to a voice mailbox without any greeting message, and the call has not been returned at the time of this posting.
We don’t know if the state really did not pay its bill, but Internet registrars typically have highly automated and reliable computer systems. Nor would non-payment on time be anything unusual for the state. Perhaps this will turn out to be a simple oversight, but on the other hand, Hawaii’s state agencies are notorious for late payment.
Update: Ok, ok, I should have stopped there. In my original post I diverged into recalling how the state is slow to pay its bills. We don’t know yet why a bill to renew the domain might not have been paid. After I posted this article I realized that it could be as simple as the guy who renews the website (presumably Tam) may not work there any longer, and he has the GoDaddy password… that would also account for why the State Librarian was quoted as being unsure when the website would be back up, according to the Star-Advertiser breaking news story here. So I’ve deleted my rant, even though the state is often late to pay its bills.
Post a Comment
Requiring those Captcha codes at least temporarily, in the hopes that it quells the flood of comment spam I've been receiving.