20:56 - 01.02.06
breaker breaker
One of the biggest stressors during this election has been the number of staff members who have struggled with personal crises over the 60 days. Given I still have a very strong "mom complex", it is hard to try to find the balance between being available to support someone when they are in pain and being an employee myself of a government agency that doesn't seem to give any quarter for any reason. The only response to personal distress that I have ever heard from them is the direction not to hire members all of one family group in more senior positions - hard to do in small towns - in case one dies and the rest of the staff are too distressed to continue. Apparently last election one man died while working one evening and his wife found his body next morning in the election office. That election office was closed until replacements could be flown in from outside the riding. Now, if a candidate dies the whole process is shut down until a by-election can be called at a later time. It is part of the legislation. Election staff don't even have sick leave available to them, because they are contract workers. So for my one person still hopitalized, the other whose spouse is in the terminal stages of their disease, the one whose family member is undergoing major surgery, the one whose marriage has suddenly cratered, or the one who finds their child in crisis and needs time to parent? The response from head office is to cut the person out and hire someone else. Nothing like increasing their distress on purpose is there?
It is no different from what is done in the corporate world in this city mind you. If one is away with a sickness for more than a couple of days in a contract situation the usual response is - be in the office by "X" or we'll replace you. In both instances the people who have often given great value to a project are no more than yesterday's trash. Not grace, no quarter, no humanity. Sometimes, if it is a long time employee in a big firm, they might get a card or flowers, but time to recover and return to work? I've only ever encountered that in one of my consulting jobs? Miller's "Death of a Salesman" spoke to the issue most poignantly. I've never forgotten Willy Loman's analogy of being like an orange where his company took every last ounce of juice from him then tossed away the peel. Sigh.
I tried reading the newspapers to find some lightness but nothing good there either. "Put down your weapons" as a Canadian photographer - local guy - and an American correspondent are injured in Iraq and a Canadian diplomatic group are fired upon. My friend and co-peer from past elections e-mails about her experiences in the elections in Gaza. I found myself thinking about her the other day during the election when we had to call in the police for the one polling station. At least there weren't any machine guns visible. I decided to be grateful for that and found I coped better when dealing with all four of those telephones going at the same time as I tried to defuse the situation from a remote position. I had been beside myself with worry up until that moment of recollection. This piece written at the end of World War I by a German political prisoner sort of sums it up.
So now on to the next installment of our wind up of the election story. Saturday began much the same as the end of Friday night. The difference was that is was the lst day I could actually pay staff to complete all our tasks. To ensure that was possible all 10 of our computers had to be used for data entry all the time because of the volume of data entered and the slowness of the system. I was entering information on mine and my assistant tech was doing the same on his unit. I was needed elsewhere, so when my number two son arrived to help I felt it would be safe to leave him working on my computer while I continued working with the group who waiting for me so the decommissioning of the ballot boxes could be completed. They hadn't wasted time in the interim mind. The boxing up of every bit of material in the entire office by designated lots was well underway. 300 boxes mind, in the end. Around 3:45 my son came to where I was working to ask a technical question; by that time it was obvious my female staff was finding the lifting and carrying of the boxes very tiring so I asked him if he would switch gears and assist since I could see that one of the young women who was very fast on a computer and who I trust had arrived. I was comfortable with her sitting in my office to protect the safety of the data laying around and didn't mind that she would be working in my account instead of a regular data entry account. At 5 pm I realized that she was back where we were working again as was my son. "Did you shut the door to my office when you left?" "Well I never went into your office because one of the other computers came available just as I was walking through the data entry area." She had thought I had only sent her to the computer station because she was fast not because of the security issues we've had to deal with.
I grabbed my keys and headed toward my office. Sure enough my computer screen was frozen on a particular screen. Control alt delete wasn't working to release the program so I finally tried just using the power button to turn it off. Still no luck. Hit the power source on the surge bar and was finally able to power it down. Rebooted and found the system stop and demand a password. The last time that occurred was during the last election when there was a suspicion there was a security breach. Oi. Clicked on the cancel button and the desktop came up. One good sign. Tried to log in to my email to write a report only to get the message that I was locked out of the network and would have to call an administrator to be reinstated. Decided to try to just continue data entry if possible and tried to open the necessary software. Up popped a DOS screen that basically said it was toast. Called the support desk and explained my problem to the tech on call. As I was doing that I was rebooting the computer once again hoping he could log me back in remotely. After I gave him the details he escalated the ticket to a tier two and signed off. I mamged to find a way to launch the reports software to see if I could determine who last worked on the unit. It printed out a journal showing that my son had finished data entry at 3:43 and no other information was forthcoming. At that point one of my staf from the work area came by to tell me there was a call for me in the tech office from Ottawa. Logged out of everything and powered off again locking my drawers, cabinets, and door as I left my office. It was a tier three tech telling me "I had a big problem". There had definitely been an attempt to take data from the system and it was serious. He told me that he was escalating the ticket again and that I was to call the police immediately to see if they could take fingerprints off the unit. Oi.
I went off to do that. Callded the district office and was told I would have to call the main dispatch number since the officer who had originally taken the first break in report was out on patrol. The officer working as a dispatcher said it might be a few hours before his car would arrive given it was Saturday night and the streets in our area were "busy". Called the head of all security for Elections Canada and left a voicemail explaining the issue to date. At that point another call came through on my tech's line and it was the head of security for IT. He was very nice and said he would call the head of security at his home. He tried to make me feel better about the circumstances but personally it felt as though someone had kicked me hard in the stomach. You see because it was Sturday night the only access into the building was if one had a security swipe card or if one was buzzed up to our office after calling in. Our doors were locked and there was only staff who were working - ostensibly - allowed on the premises. I had decided that simply so there would be no intrusions or distractions by people coming by for "visits" and so that our security issues were less of a problem. Or so I thought. However, the sign off comment of the Ottawa honcho was "don't be alone anywhere tonight". "Anywhere" I asked thinking of being at home alone with that hanging over me - my youngest out visiting my grandbabies for the evening. "No, just anywhere in the office". Well I really needed to use the washroom at that point and I had nointention of taking anyone with me thank you very much but I got his drift anyway. There was good news and bad news to educe out of that isn't there? ONe the one hand it seemed that Ottawa had checked and found that no data had been downloaded, on the other hand the perpetrator was still on site - one of the staff. On site, the team working on decommissioning and packing consisted of seven people including me. On the computers were 12 people over the time period involved as one change out occurred and one supervisor started doing the final paperwork necessary to close out. Of 18 people in the core staff, one person had and was the likely thief for each of the incidents that we were able to track incontrovertibly to theft. When I started running names through my head as to who was present for all of the incidents it narrowed down to about three people - all except one of whom I had invested a great deal of trust. Even more sick to my stomach now.
As that fact was registering, I was walking with my son as he and his partner left for the night. She is 8 months pregnant and was feeling very tired. Returned to find my assistant standing with the officer who had originally responded to the first break in along with two other police officers. It was 6 pm - less than half an hour since my call to the police dispatch. Guess someone somewhere had changed the mind of the dispatcher about the time required to see me. Oh my. Now what? The other male was the partner of the first police officer - I had spoken with him when the theft of the personnel data had occurred. The other person appeared to be an intern - she was quiet the entire time we talked. They came into my office and I went through the process of explaining what had happened again. Collect more statements - is it four or five incidents now, I'm losing count between the in office issues and the polling day problems.
Finally got home about 8:40 pm after finishing all the data entry and the decommissioning of the ballot boxes. Most of the paking was complete but we were all too tired to continue. Wiser maybe to come back the next day in a much smaller group to do the last of it. I called my youngest at his brother's and asked him not to stay the night there just in case. He must have called number four son immediately after because he walked in half an hour later and stayed visiting with me until my youngest came home just after midnight.
Sunday I went in early with my finance officer hoping that we would be able to have some uninterrupted time to finish off that last payroll. We dropped her daughter off at the university first. Rehearsal for a big play that opens Valentine's Day. Then down to work. Several of the staff claims had to be assessed one by one because there were problems with amounts or hours worked. Had to decide what to do about the one worker still in hospital. She hadn't submitted a timesheet on her last day of work because she hadn't known it would be her last. I had emailed her where she is hospitalized in Ontario asking for details but she hadn't yet responded. No surprise given how ill she is but what to do? Finally got everything worked out at about 1:30. Then my finance officer pointed out we were 100 hours short with respect to paying everyone. Called Ottawa to ask for enugh hours to complete this last payroll and got the royal run around. If my assistant and I could have taken our time and finished off the balance of the tasks over the next two weeks some arguement could have been made for not hiring so many staff. However, Ottawa had been the ones insisting all the data entry be done by Friday night - then Saturday. That was why I had allowed the PC unit in my office to be used in the first place. I would never have risked leaving the security there so vulnerable otherwise, let alone going over the budgetted hours given. I can do one thing or I can do the other with the hours and deadlines given but not both. It isn't physically possible with the equipment we had available. Finally at about 2:00 came the word that I had to create a spreadsheet showing each worker, the hours worked, and the tasks undertaken. That was sent within half an hour - 2:30 pm. Called Ottawa back at 4:30 pm having been working on packing and other paperwork in the interim just to be told that we would now have to wait until tomorrow. All the administrators had gone home for the day so there was no possibility of an approval code being given. Now in the deadlines we have been given payroll is one of the most difficult to miss. We miss our deadlines and staff don't get paid on time.We miss those deadlines and I get fined as well. So even though we had done everything asked of us we were now forced into a breach of deadline situation. We aren't allowed to post or transmit payroll until all timesheets are submitted and we have to wait until the end of Saturday for that. At that point after everything else that had occurred I had another fit of tears. The only two I've ever had in all the 10 years I have worked for Elections Canada. I stated that I considered the events of the afternoon obstruction, because we had done due diligence both in getting the work we were required to complete done and in submitting our justification for additional payroll hours. The person on the other end of the line was adamant that they could do nothing for us. I pointed out it was just 4:30 pm local time and that it was still regular business hours for us. She said that maybe one of the administrators might come back to work after their dinner but she could make no guarantees. I explained to her that last event some of my people had waited 3 months for their pay even when we had submitted everything on time because of a software glitch. Was I going to have toask our MP to step in again? I spent about five minutes calming down then went to see my finance officer with the bad news. Would she call her help desk to see what they could do. The word obstruction under the elections act with respect to an election officer doing their duties is actionable and iI think both fines and jail time are attached. Seemingly the word had trickled over to the finance department because they unlocked our account without a murmur even without an authorization code. That has never happened in all 10 years I have worked for the corporation but I didn't really care as long as my staff were paid on time.
In addition to my finance officer and me, there was just my assistant and one of the special ballot co-ordinators working on Sunday. They continued taping and boxing materials left over from the evening before. We all worked for five hours then went home. Next day it was one of our other special ballot co-ordinators, my assistant and I picking away at the rest of the tasks. Canada Post had called and asked to set a time to do their pick up as had the furniture suppliers, the suppliers of our kitchen and training equipment and our telephones. Usually we have to sit and wait for all those people, so even though there was pressure associated with that, it was good to think we could maybe be mostly done by the end of this week. Constant interruptions again, in addition to the finance fiasco, to give direction or assistance made it difficult for me to get my paperwork done. Also there was the guilt even though it wasn't reasonable. The staff working are paid to pack, but even so I could see at least two of them thought that they were hard done by and that I should be helping them. Frustrating. Maybe I should have just left it so they wouldn't get their pay,eh? I know as the administrator what I need to do is ignore the complaining. For my own health though I need something to blow off the stress - exercise is a good way to do that. Compromised and did some of both each day.
I have to go in early tomorrow to complete yet more paperwork dear diary so I think I'll stop there and take up the tale tomorrow. Good night.
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