Computer glitches cause errors in finance data posted on Web

Ignore the campaign-finance-disclosure summaries on the lieutenant governor's Web site, at least until Tuesday: Much of the information there now is wrong because of computer bugs that the office hopes to fix by early this week.

This past Tuesday was the deadline for candidates, political-action committees and corporations to file year-end disclosure forms. But a new computer program being used for that by the office of Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert would not allow many of them to file online, so many griping legislators quickly filled out paper forms.

The system also was miscalculating summaries of donations and spending for candidates who did manage to file online that were tens of thousands of dollars off from information on actual submissions, according to comparisons by the Deseret News.

"Obviously, our office was very disappointed that the Department of Technology Service didn't give us the product that we and anyone who uses the Web site should have expected," said Mark Thomas, office administrator for Herbert's office.

"DTS has now made this its No. 1 priority and has pulled other employees from other projects to get the Web site where it needs to be," he said.

Thomas noted that by law, his office has until Tuesday (a week after the original filing deadline) to have all forms — including those submitted on paper because of problems — online. "This is a deadline we have demanded DTS to meet," he said.

Until then, Thomas said in an e-mail to the Deseret News, "I do not believe the info posted will be correct, in particular the balances. We'll have a note on the Web site stating as such."

He said his office is demanding that DTS "do whatever it takes to ensure we have a correctly functioning Web site" by that upcoming Tuesday deadline.

"We certainly understand that this should have been the pressure we put on DTS before the reporting deadline," he said. "We were assured repeatedly that we would have a functioning Web site by the deadline. However, at this point, we have learned from our mistakes and want to look forward and do what is necessary to have a Web site that is what the public expects it to be."

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E-mail: lee@desnews.com