By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Hays' state Rep. Barb Wasinger, R-Hays, was appointed as chairwoman of the new Legislative Modernization Committee last year.
"The [House] Speaker was very generous saying, 'You take it where you want to go,'" Wasinger said.
The committee had already realized that any changes they wanted to make in the capitol would have to go through the state's IT Department.
"We started to investigate what our IT Department does, and we've been regularly meeting with the governor's IT staff. We determined we really need to get the executive, legislative and judicial branches working together on IT," she said.
"Well, then, the judiciary got hacked, and we went into hyperdrive," Wasinger said. "The judiciary was truly in hyperdrive."
The members' roles quickly came into focus after the Kansas court system suffered an Oct. 12 cyberattack that prevented the electronic filing of documents and blocked online access to records for weeks.
Judicial branch officials blamed a ransomware group based in Russia, saying it stole data and threatened to post it on a dark website if its demands were not met.
"But we realized we need to be doing something to secure every agency in the state of Kansas," Wasinger said.
There are just a handful of agencies within the legislative branch that need to be protected. The executive branch has 58 agencies, while the judiciary has connections with all the courts in Kansas.
"We have a lot of things to look at. We had already talked to the executive [branch] about keeping our own IT silos. We all need control over our own houses, but we need someone that's coordinating all that," she said.
Wasinger visited with State Supreme Court Chief Justice Marla Luckert about the idea who said she was thrilled that the committee planned to take action.
"We particularly realize that we need to be doing something as a group, that we can apply security throughout the state of Kansas, and protect Kansans' private data as well as the systems that we have come to rely on," Wasinger said.
The judicial hack stopped all filings of court cases electronically.
In the 23rd Judicial District, which includes Ellis, Gove, Rooks and Trego counties, having to revert to filings by hand was taxing on court employees, said Mike Smith, district court administrator.
"Just the amount of extra work that is involved doing a paper file and going back to a system that we hadn't used in years. We're really not equipped to use it again," Smith said.
"We have a digital system that processes information electronically. It's not set up to do things by hand like we used to do a long time ago," he said. "I can't stress enough how much I appreciate the clerks' work that they've done.
Smith says the 23rd District court system is back up and running as it was before the Oct. 12 shutdown, with minimal limitations.
"There are some features of the case management system that are not enabled that we are waiting on," he said.
"It's also been a huge inconvenience for anyone in the public who has dealings with the court system."
One example of the inconvenience is background checks of people who want to be adult volunteers with the Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland, which covers 80 counties in Kansas, including Ellis County.
"In our case, we used to do them in bulk. We'd take everybody's that came in during a week and just upload them, and get a response for the whole batch," said Muriel Boyce, director of communications. "Now it's definitely something that you take more time and individually do.
Boyce said the manual check hasn't kept people from working with Girl Scouts, but just slowed the process.
"Once the system is fully functional again, we will run everyone back through a second time to ensure that nothing was missed or that everything is still OK and cleared," she said.
Rep. Wasinger and her committee have talked with several cybersecurity experts.
"We can't fix everything tomorrow, but we need to start today to try to get things fixed," she said.
"I've learned more about cybersecurity than I ever dreamed and found out how frightening [hacks are]. People will always try to rob you, whether it's peace of mind or data, and they'll always find new ways.
"But we need to have a system set up for every part of the government, and we want one person in charge of all the IT directors.
"... So, we're talking about a big shift in how the state has worked up until now," Wasinger said. "What I feel good about is we have all three branches agreeing that we need to do something."
Luckert has said the court system needs $2.6 million in supplemental funding to properly respond to the October cyberattack. She also said the judiciary did not pay any ransom money.
"We have to lay a framework on how we're going to handle this IT plan," Wasinger said. "We have to figure out the funding route for it, and the division of duties."
The forensic investigation of the cyberattack is ongoing.