SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — The Spokane County Clerk’s Office is back to pen and paper due to a statewide system shutdown.
On November 1, the statewide online court system experienced a data breach and was shut down within minutes out of an abundance of caution.
Days later, the WA State Court is investigating the breach and the system is still down.
As a result, the Spokane County Clerk’s Office is having to work mainly offline.
“We’re doing everything the old way, the manual way, using paper, ink, pens, files, folders and all that,” said Spokane County Clerk Tim Fitzgerald.
Spokane has a back-up system in place, so the internal systems are still working.
However, criminal histories cannot be seen while the statewide system is down, unless the person has already gone through the Spokane County Court system. New filings are also not able to be entered unless done in person.
“If they file a new case, we will not be able to see those documents until we get the system up and running, because we can’t enter even into our own data system,” said Judge Annette Plese.
The system is expected to be down into next week, and as of Thursday, no certain end-date has been specified.
Judge Plese said the most difficult part about the shutdown is just not knowing when the system will be back up and running.
“If the system comes back next week, we have stacks on stacks of documents that are now going to have to be entered and coded,” she said.
Judge Plese said they have never gone without electronic legal services for this long.
The Spokane County Clerk’s Office asks everyone to be patient as the issue is resolved.
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