GWIS2 experienced maintenance difficulties beginning last Saturday and continuing all week, posing a major inconvenience for students wishing to use GW e-mail accounts, look-up faculty Web sites or utilize other GWIS2 resources.

Last Saturday and Sunday, GWIS2 was down for more than 13 hours while Information Systems and Services replaced recalled parts. During that time, students were unable to access their GW e-mail accounts on Webmail. Once repairs were completed, a large backlog of undelivered e-mails caused Webmail and Pine interfaces to be slow for the rest of the week.

Adding to the problem was the lack of disk space on the GWIS2 system. Bret Jones of ISS said that more storage space would be installed on GWIS2 to safeguard against future problems. In addition, he cited possible plans to remove e-mail from GWIS2, which would add twice the e-mail memory and might alleviate future complications.

Jones said e-mail is expected to be running reliably by April, which is far too long a timeframe for performing the necessary repairs and changes.

ISS encountered unforeseen difficulties and took far too long to make needed repairs and get GWIS2 running again. ISS officials should have been prepared to handle unexpected emergencies such as this one. The extra funds spent on preparedness would have been well worth it. Instead, anyone who uses any of the GWIS2 applications was unnecessarily inconvenienced.

Students rely on GWIS2 for many purposes – personal and academic. This past week’s episode was distressing and, in the future, such problems should be averted with adequate preparedness.