Westchester County Becomes Telecom Hub for Neighboring Counties

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Immediately after last weeks attacks on the World Trade Center, three New York counties lost their connection to the state computer systems because the state had its telecommunications hub in the center.

"People in New York City, Nassau and Suffolk counties and here in Westchester County; everybody was cut off from the ability to make social services entries and payments," said Norm Jacknis, CIO of Westchester County. "We were cut off from the health network and most of the state polices network. It was pretty serious; not as serious as what was happening at the World Trade Center, but, as a large county, we have a lot of interaction with the state."

Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties surround New York City, and, fortunately, Westchester finished work approximately six months ago on attaching its new fiber network to the states new fiber backbone, the NyeNet.

Though the system hadnt been used much, Jacknis said, it proved to be extremely valuable to neighboring counties, who were able to use the network to conduct county business.

"The two Long Island counties, Nassau and Suffolk, piggy-backed on our network to be able to get their basic work done," he continued. "They were able to go through our hub to the state, as opposed to going through the one in Manhattan, which had been put out of business. [Our network] was in place, and there was a lot of last-minute work to actually turn the switches on and make it go right, but it was nice to be able to help."

Jacknis is hoping that Westchester Countys fiber network will ultimately serve as a backup for surrounding companies, so that local governments have two paths to state computers in Albany.

"You just cant afford to have a single point of failure in something as important as a data-communications network," he said. "The big issue here was really data communications. Everybody was thinking about phones and how to get cell phones up, but, for us, we really needed the data communications between computers in our various governments and the states computers."

As a worst-case scenario, he said, if last weeks attacks had included a biological component, local governments would have had a difficult time exchanging critical information because the states health network was down.