Industrywide problems

Although FirstEnergy officials take exception to some findings included in the final report, particularly with respect to the claim that its system was deficient of reactive power support on Aug. 14, company officials said the company is moving forward to enhance its reliability as part of the interconnected electric grid system. "The bulk of the [46] recommendations arent about us; theyre industrywide issues," said Kristen Baird, a FirstEnergy spokeswoman. "We think that speaks very widely that there was much more going on than some downed power lines and computer-system problems in Ohio." Baird said FirstEnergy will have a new computer-monitoring and computer-management system operational at its command center by June. In addition, an aggressive vegetation-management effort is underway, as well as increased staffing involving two additional command center operators on-site, one of whom will serve in an engineering role to examine modeled and forecasted data. Experts say many IT operations could be in jeopardy by failing to consider software upgrades and the additions of new devices or systems hardware over time in an environment without considering their potential impact on business-continuity or disaster-recovery plans already in place. Next page: Botched daily change management hexes business continuity.