Mayor Parker, IT & Emergency Officials Provide Update on City’s Response to Global IT Issues

PHILADELPHIA - Earlier today, the City of Philadelphia was among government municipalities and businesses around the world who experienced internet connectivity challenges due to a global IT issue. The Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT) confirmed that this was an external technical issue that arose during a planned upgrade - and not due to any cyber attack.

During a press conference this afternoon, Mayor Cherelle. L. Parker was joined by information technology, emergency response, public safety, City operations and PHL International Airport leadership, as well as partners from representatives from critical infrastructure partners including SEPTA, PGW, PECO and the Water Department to provide an update on impacts to Philadelphia and the City's response.

"We're aware that residents and local businesses may have experienced some disruptions, and the City of Philadelphia has been hard at work since the early hours of this morning, responding to and handling this IT issue to ensure Philadelphia government operations were impacted as little as possible," said Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. "All City departments and agencies are open for business, and services continue to be provided, with some services in limited operations today. I'm grateful to our Office of Innovation and Technology, our Office of Emergency Management, and every city, state and federal partner as they monitored this issue and worked to quickly resolve it. I appreciate our employees' flexibility as they offered the best possible services in the context of this sudden challenge. Our public safety agencies all continued to operate and respond as needed to our citizens' calls. We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused and appreciate everyone's patience."

Shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, July 19, the Office of Emergency Management's Regional Coordination Center became aware that an issue was impacting city computers resulting in some limited functions of city services and programs the RIC use as the City's 24-hour watch desk.

"Here at The Office of Emergency Management we are fortunate that the city has a 24/7 dedicated watch desk, watching for all types of hazards even technological emergencies like we experienced today. We started to enact our procedures very quickly, called our other 24/7 functions including our police radio and fire communications to understand the extent of the outage and put our continuity of operations plan into place." Dominick Mireles, Director of The Office of Emergency Management, stated.

OEM's Emergency Operations Center activated this morning to continue critical coordination with public safety, infrastructure, transportation, and governmental partners to assess damages, impacts, and ascertain any unmet needs.

"Today our City IT employees, OEM and all our public safety departments moved immediately into our normal standard operating procedures, whenever there is any kind of an emergency," said Melissa Scott, Philadelphia Chief Information Officer. "This issue occurred at 1 o'clock in the morning. By 2 am, we knew what we needed to do in order to move forward. We evaluated to make sure our data was safe, and the city was safe. We're deploying our IT technicians, making sure we reach every city employee having an issue with a laptop. By Monday we should be close to 100 percent."

The City will continue to share updates on the City's website here.