Even State\'s Computers Need Time Off

August 23, 2012, 10:55 am

By JAMES BARRON

In this day and age, when routine chores like paying bills or ordering groceries can be done online at anytime, day or night, some New York State agencies have Web sites that have yet to join the 24/7 world.

The state's new electronic filing system for corporate forms known as biennial statements goes offline at 7:30 p.m. weekdays and stays off until 6 a.m. It does not work on weekends, either.

Unemployment Benefits Online, on the State Department of Labor's site, also has limited hours. The site says unemployment insurance claims cannot be filed before 7:30 a.m. on weekdays or after 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. On Fridays, the cutoff is 5 p.m. On weekends, the si te is open for 31 hours without interruption, from 12:01 a.m. Saturday to 7 p.m. Sunday.

Stephen J. Dubner, writing on the blog Freakonomics, took note of the down time on the site for biennial statements, collected by the state's Department of State. “I can't recall the last time (or even the first time) I saw a Web site that was only open during business hours,” he wrote on Monday. “I guess it is a mark of how the Web has changed our daily lives that we are disappointed to find a virtual office that isn't open 24/7.”

Edison Alban, a spokesman for the State Department of State, said online filing of biennial statements - a corporate document that must be submitted every two years, along with a $9 filing fee - began in May.

“So far, more than 30,000 entities have filed their statements using this new feature,” he said. A biennial statement contains contact information on a corporation, including the name and address of its top official, among ot her information. Corporations that use the Web site can pay the filing fee with a credit card.

Mr. Alban said the system that processes the data “was developed years ago, at a time when businesses primarily submitted their filings in paper form. The current system, which is utilized by a number of state agencies, requires some time in the late evenings for multiple maintenance to be performed regularly.”

He said the state was working on upgrading the system “so that service will truly be available 24/7.”

At the Labor Department, a spokesman, Leo Rosales, said the down time was unavoidable. “During overnight hours,” he said by e-mail, “the computerized system updates the large volume of daily transactions and performs routine maintenance checks.  These updates ensure that claims are processed accurately and timely while maintaining confidentiality on claims and certifications.”

The State University of New York at Albany campus has a re gistration site, MyUAlbany, that says it is open seven days a week, but only 20½ hours a day. The site says it is closed 2:30 to 6 a.m. For many college students, that is prime time.

The hours are wrong, said Karl Luntta, a spokesman for the school. MyUAlbany “is in fact open 24/7.” He said the information on the site - where students can register for classes, pay bills, check their grades, add or drop classes - would be changed. He said MyUAlbany had 6.1 million visits last year, second only to the school's home page.

“Years ago, when we first started the Web site and technology was different,” he said, “we would reserve that time for maintenance, backups, updates and so on. The technology has been improved. We rarely find it necessary to deny access and shut MyUAlbany down.”