QScend: The Towns “Huntington at Your Service” Provider has Catastrophic Failure

On Thursday June 14 an email circulated at Town Hall that was addressed to “Town Department Heads and QAlert users” that there was a “catastrophic” failure at QScends datacenter. This email addressed the failure of the Towns Citizen Relationship Management System (CRMS) called “Huntington at Your Service (HAYS). The CRMS was contracted through a Connecticut vendor named QScend. The initial contract was for $31,500 for setup and then $6,300 every three months. The contract was for three years.

This is just one more blemish on this system. The Town had originally said the system would be in place by October 1, 2011. The CRMS system finally made its debut on March 1, 2012. Since then users inside and outside Town Hall have complained about its lack of accurate placement of complaints among other issues. The site operates completely outside the Towns website at http://huntingtonny.gov and the integration is not seamless. The initial selection process did not include representatives from all town Departments and elected officials.

The email went on to say that this “catastrophic” failure affected other municipal clients of QScend as well.

The Town had been experiencing performance issues earlier in the week with QScend’s CRMS and the Town was advised by QScend that on the evening of June 13, 2012 the system would be taken down for service. It appears that it never recovered from that servicing because on the morning of June 14^th the system was not available and there were emails at Town Hall alluding to this issue. As of the morning of June 19, 2011 the site (http://huntingtonny.qscend.com) has been re-established.

In addition to the problems with QScend the Town has experienced problems with an emergency call system provided by a New Jersey based company named Swiftreach Networks, Inc. The problems with Swiftreach appeared to be related to the Town not supplying specific targeted areas for the call center to call. Earlier this year the Town had to bring in Town employees on overtime to deliver letters to residents in Dix Hills Water District when there was a contamination problem. We have been told that the Town was unable to provide a specific list of residences in the District to be contacted by the call system. During last years Tropical Storm residents outside the Town were told that the Town of Huntington would be picking up their storm debris.

Updated June 19, 2011