A glitch during a security update caused the city's operating systems to crash Thursday, disabling phones and computers at several city agencies for nearly seven hours.
City information services director Dick Grasmick said the problem began around 6 a.m. when a bad file wiped out the operating system during a security upgrade. Personnel worked to restore the phones and computers, and the entire system was fully functioning by 1 p.m.
The inconvenience to the citizens was the fact that they could not call into city agencies that have IP phones,"" Grasmick said, noting that many agencies, like Madison Metro, the police department, water utility and the streets department, were unavailable by phone during the outage.
Madison Police Department Public Information Officer Joel DeSpain said the problems did not affect calls to 911 or police dispatch.
""At no time was there any safety problem as far as the computers being down,"" he said.
