KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The FBI released a brief statement Thursday in response to the city’s network outage in Kansas City, Missouri.
“We are aware of the of the outage that occurred on the city government’s website and have been in contact with our partners, however I would refer you to the city for any additional information,” FBI Kansas City Public Affairs Specialist/ Media Representative Bridget Patton said in the statement.
Inside of City Hall Thursday, it was a fairly quiet day. None of the elected city council members were inside their offices on Floor 22 when FOX4 was there. That’s because the Thursday city council meeting that usually takes place at 3 p.m. that day was canceled, likely due to the network outage.
Will Ruder, executive vice president of the Greater Kansas City Home Builders Association says the business owners he represents are being affected by this outage. Compass KC is still down.
“Systems go down. Online platforms are not ‘set it and forget it’ infallible things. They get bugs. They get attacks, whatever the case may be. The system will go down occasionally for maintenance. They’ll take it down, but they’ll advertise that fact, and you just kind of plan around it,” Ruder said in an interview with FOX4 Thursday. “I think a day or two, that’s kind of where the annoyance starts transitioning to, ‘What in the world’s going on? How is this going to get resolved? When is it going to get resolved? To what degree?'”
Compass KC is the system builders use to get permits for construction work. You get to it through the city’s website, and even though the city website’s back up for the most part, the Compass KC part is not.
“It’s just kind of an unknown as to when and to what degree this is going to get resolved,” Ruder said.
The Compass KC portal makes builders less reliant on going to Floor 5 of City Hall. Ruder says the portal takes pressure off of staffers, but we don’t know how long it’s going to be down.
“It’s just a way to allow for a freer flow of information beyond just a 9 to 5 business hour,” he continued.
Mayor Quinton Lucas Press Secretary Jazzlyn Johnson referred us to City Press Secretary Sherae Honeycutt. Honeycutt works in City Manager Brian Platt’s office. Platt and Honeycutt won’t comment to FOX4 on camera. Honeycutt hadn’t released any update Thursday afternoon.
Wednesday night though, she released an update, saying you can’t make your KC Water payments online, but you can make them at their office, at 4800 East 63rd Street. Penalties for late water payments won’t be assessed right now because of the network outage.
The city’s app is back up and running, according to Honeycutt. Municipal Court opened back up Wednesday as well.
