In the government-technology snafu of the month, if not the year, Brown County’s e-mail doesn’t work. Try to e-mail our commissioners, county fair officials, the Dacotah Prairie Museum, or other county offices via a Google e-mail account, and they’ll probably never hear from you.
After months of troubleshooting, the county’s tech guy says we can’t blame him:
Despite months of troubleshooting, whatever glitch prevents Brown County officials and employees from receiving the bulk of email sent from Google accounts remains unknown.
Chief Information Officer Paul Sivertsen said that while some emails from Gmail accounts get through, many are rejected.
He said the emails are often deferred from the county’s primary server to a secondary server. Once there, the messages are not delivered to their intended recipients.
“I’ve had the state look at this, and we’re set up the best we possibly can be and it’s all a Google issue,” Sivertsen said [Shannon Marvel, “Many Gmails Sent to Brown County Officials Are Never Delivered,” Aberdeen American News, 2018.04.04].
Hmm… the email gets from Google to the county’s server. The county’s server kicks the e-mail to another county server. Neither county server delivers the messages they receive from the world.
It sounds to me like Google did its part, getting its messages to the county. The slack in the line appears to be on the county’s servers… and I don’t think it’s Google’s job to fix those servers. Perhaps our six county commission candidates should weigh in with their solutions….
Well, hotmail still exists.