Software change has led to loss of thousands of important emails. | File photo
Software change has led to loss of thousands of important emails. | File photo
Thousands of state records are unreadable due to a computer software change at the Iowa Department of Human Services.
The records, many of them dealing with child-abuse investigations, are emails that were encrypted to protect confidentiality. The department changed the software in 2018 and reportedly lost the ability to decrypt virtually all of the encrypted messages sent over the previous two years, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.
“I’ll wait for an answer on how it is possible to be this incompetent,” Iowa City Councilor Janice Weiner tweeted Jan.9.
Roxanne Conlin, a Des Moines attorney who is seeking access to Department of Human Services emails related to a 2017 child-abuse investigation, said the loss of the information has profound implications for agencies that investigate the department’s handling of child-abuse complaints, as well as Iowans suspected of abuse.
“This is egregious,” she said, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. “There is a huge swath — as I understand, it’s two years’ worth — of emails that no one can access now. My God, that’s a pretty horrible situation. And, of course, we’re never going to know what is in all those encrypted emails.”
A lawsuit involving Alyson Rasmusson of Marshalltown led to the disclosure of the encryption problem. She ran an in-home daycare service and in 2017 was blamed by the Department of Human Services for injuries sustained by one of the children in her care.
Rasmusson alleges the child’s mother repeatedly told state investigators the child appeared to have been injured at home by the family’s dog, but that Department of Human Services investigators said they were under pressure from their superiors to find someone to blame. The department eventually issued a formal finding of abuse by Rasmusson through the denial of critical care. Rasmussen appealed that finding, and the department allegedly offered to alter its conclusions if she signed a form agreeing not to sue the state for its actions.
Rasmussen refused, and one day before the appeal hearing, the department changed its findings to “perpetrator unknown.”
By that time, Conlin says, Rasmusson had lost her day care business.
“She loved caring for children,” Conlin said. “They just ruined her life.”
Conlin said she believes Department of Human Services has an obligation to retain its records and prevent their wholesale destruction through encryption.
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