ARLA/CLUSTER: FCC fecha o website da Universal Licensing System para manutenção.

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

FCC now says ULS, other systems, will not return until September 10

The FCC has announced that its Universal Licensing System (ULS) and
some other website applications remain offline for maintenance, but
the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) is now back in service and
the Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS) should be available
in a short time.

The remaining computer system upgrades scheduled to have been
completed by yesterday, September 8, now are not expected to be done
until September 10, the FCC said in a Public Notice. As the ULS outage
continues, it will not be possible to file any Amateur Radio
applications, including examination session documents, or conduct any
license or application searches.

"Over Labor Day weekend, a dedicated FCC team worked day and night to
complete major IT upgrades," the FCC's Chief Information Officer David
A. Bray, said in a statement. "This work included physically moving
more than 200 different legacy servers out of FCC's headquarters to a
commercial service provider." This move - a cost-saving measure, Bray
explained - ran into trouble when it was determined that additional
cabling was needed to complete the transition. "Unfortunately, this
delayed completion of all of the system upgrades - even with the FCC
team working around the clock throughout the holiday weekend," Bray
explained.

While the requirement to pay a regulatory fee for Amateur Radio vanity
call sign applications officially ended on September 3, prospective
vanity applicants now will have to wait until the ULS is up and
running again to file an application for an available call sign. The
FCC has told ARRL that the approximately 18-day vanity call sign
waiting period will remain in place "for now."

ARRL VEC Manager Maria Somma, AB1FM, said a lot of candidates and
volunteer examiners have begun asking why new call signs or license
upgrades have not yet been issued.

"We have a huge back log in our filing system that continues to grow!"
she said. "We already have approximately 75 examination sessions and
over 500 applications waiting to be released to FCC."

Bray said it took seven moving vans to contain the servers being
relocated. "With a massive server move of this scale - even with
detailed planning, independent verification, and backup plans - the
opportunity always exists for surprises, especially with legacy IT
systems, nearly 400 program applications, and hundreds of servers," he
pointed out.

The project will relocate the FCC's "legacy" computer systems to a
commercial service provider, helping to reduce maintenance costs,
improve "resiliency," and allow the FCC to shift many of its legacy
applications to the cloud, as it has done with its Consumer Help Desk.

The FCC said in its Public Notice that it anticipates all systems and
databases to be back online by 1200 UTC on September 10. By that time,
it said, the Commission's website "will have returned to normal
operations, with full content and search capabilities available." FCC
voicemail and e-mail also should be back by then too.

"We will continue to work diligently and provide updates on these IT
upgrades," Bray said. "The entire FCC team and I truly appreciate your
patience and understanding as we work to complete all of the
upgrades."

Source: The American Radio Relay League