Wiring Mixup Blamed For South Dakota Government's Summer Network Outage

Power failures at the state’s main data center left South Dakota’s government systems offline for nearly two days this summer.

Driver’s license stations closed, court proceedings were postponed and state employees scrambled to restore essential services.

More than two months later, officials said a mixup in electrical feeds at the state Capitol caused the mid-August statewide outage of South Dakota’s telecommunications network, shutting down the court system, tax collections and unemployment processing.

“The electricians were following the labeling and shut off a main breaker,” South Dakota Bureau of Human Resources and Administration Commissioner Darin Seeley said during testimony to the Legislature’s investigative arm. “Unfortunately, those (were) labeled to say that they’re connected to that main and they are not connected to that main.”

Details released publicly for the first time showed that mislabeled electrical wires led to the disruption, Seeley and Bureau of Information and Technology Commissioner Mark Wixon told the 10-member panel.

In the days after the outage, officials said an electrical failure forced driver’s licensing stations to remain closed and hundreds of court hearings to be rescheduled.

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But Seeley and Wixon said it was what happened after power was initially restored that caused the extended crash of the state’s telecommunications network.

The outage began during a planned “uninterrupted power supply replacement” at the Department of Transportation facility that houses the state’s main servers.

“So we had a plan for an uninterrupted power supply replacement, a UPS,” Seeley said. “That work was being done over a weekend… When things were being brought back online, one of the main breakers tripped a number of times and was reset and tripped and reset. Ultimately that caused some damage to that breaker.”

After the $80,000 breaker was replaced and power turned back on, officials thought the problem was contained. Wixon said power was restored and running within eight hours after replacement parts arrived from Louisville, Ky.

But problems persisted with the state network — initially a mystery to electricians and IT personnel.

Mislabeled power lines led to ongoing problems

Eventually, electricians discovered some power lines had been incorrectly labeled during prior building upgrades.

“The electricians were following the labeling and shut off a main breaker. And so when you shut off the main, you believe that everything behind that main is off,” Seeley said. “Unfortunately, those (were) labeled to say that they’re connected to that main and they are not connected to that main.”

Unbeknownst to electricians, multiple breakers were drawing power from the same source, causing surges that destroyed other equipment — including industrial-grade router systems that supply the state network used by the Department of Public Safety’s motor vehicles division, the Department of Revenue’s tax portal, and labor office services.

Lawmakers questioned whether better backup systems could have prevented the breakdown.

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“On the farm, you know, we always have extra fuses, we always have extra switches. We always have extra everything,” Rep. Julie Auch, R-Menno, said. “Are you going to have extra switches on hand or extra parts on hand so that if this doesn’t happen again?”

Seeley said the power hub has been updated numerous times during the last 50 years, and the mistake likely occurred during one of those previous enhancement projects.

“We will go back and get this looked at and try to redraw all of the lines, the way they actually are built versus what somebody designed,” Seeley said, adding BIT has already begun verifying electrical schematics to prevent future errors.

He and Wixon said that, given the unique circumstances, it’s unlikely such an event would happen again. They also suggested keeping extra $80,000 parts on hand for a slim-odds emergency might not be considered a prudent use of taxpayer resources.