The city of North Battleford is seeking to avoid any repeat of last year's computer server crash that resulted in a major loss of financial data.
To that end, the City has hired an Ottawa firm, A Hundred Answers Consulting Inc., to do an information security assessment.
That company will work with the City and with the City's service provider, Bralin Technologies Solutions, to analyze what went wrong last fall.
Three IT professionals from that firm will be doing this work for $10,000. It's expected the work will take about a month and that they will come back with recommendations well before the next budget cycle.
The server crash in Oct. 2012 had the biggest impact on the finance department, causing a major delay in the city's budget preparations. Economic development and the fire department also lost files.
In speaking to reporters after the Aug. 19 council meeting, Finance Director Matthew Hartney said all the electronic files for the city were lost.
While some of it was recovered through their audit firm and other places where some files were stored, "even still to this date we're finding reports or certain Excel documents that need to be recreated," said Hartney.
Hartney welcomes council's decision to take on the independent firm to "come in like a consultant relationship just to better understand what happened and how we can improve going forward, which is important any time something difficult happens."
