Harris County, TX, August 19, 2024, Starting on Sunday, Harris County’s Universal Services Department (US) experienced a technology outage that impacted some county services. The outage was caused by a vendor equipment failure, and US is working with the vendor to identify the cause. As of Monday morning, the vendor had resolved the equipment issue and US has restored most of the impacted county systems and is in the process of restoring the rest.
The main systems impacted were county data systems, specifically including the county’s criminal justice management data system (JWEB) and the county’s finance and human resources data system (Peoplesoft). JWEB, other criminal justice-related platforms and Peoplesoft have been restored. The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD and the Harris Health System were not impacted. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office and the Harris County District Clerk’s Office said there have been no impacts to public safety at this time. No additional impacts are expected.
“I am in constant touch with county leaders from our Universal Services Department, our Office of Emergency Management, and other affected county departments as we navigate this outage. Right now our primary focus is getting all county systems restored. Once we do that, we will investigate what caused this outage and how to prevent a similar incident in the future. We have been working around the clock on this, and we will provide more information when we have it,” said Judge Lina Hidalgo.