Early last week the Illinois Attorney General website that provides vital services to Illinois residents and governmental bodies was taken down, and it is still down.  The mysterious incident has cause the website residing at ilattorneygeneral.net to become completely dysfunctional, and has also put a stop to related email servers.

At the moment, residents have no access to services related to the Public Access Counselor (PAC), which is the brank of the IAG that deals with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Open Meetings Act (OMA).  Members of public bodies are required by law to take OMA training on the website and any person acting as a FOIA Officer is also required to complete the IAG training.  State statute provides for specific compliance deadlines and, at the moment, it is not possible to complete the training programs.

Residents also use the services of the PAC to help settle FOIA and OMA disputes, of which they receive thousands per year.  For the past week, any email to the PAC or related email addresses has been bounced back with delivery errors. Requests for review by the PAC also comes with strict filing deadlines (OMA and FOIA requests for review must be filed within 60 days of the days of the incident or denial).

The IAG website that provides basic statewide information, www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov, is currently functioning and is being actively updated.  Curiously, in his press releases, Attorney General Kwame Raoul has not in any way addressed the issue of the data breech or downed web services.  The top center link on  www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov, “Public Access Counselor Annual Report”, fails to load.