White House e-mail down for a day
Obama staffers suffer from a server outage that stopped the flow of e-mail for most of Monday.
Updated at 3 p.m. PST with quotes from White House spokesman Bill Burton.
The Obama administration may be considered tech-savvy, but that didn't do much good Monday when the White House was hit with a daylong "server outage."
Most White House aides, the first lady's office, and other executive offices were without e-mail for the day, The Washington Post reported, after the outage blocked all incoming and outgoing messages beginning around 10 a.m. EST.
As of Tuesday morning, the White House was once again sending its regular slew of e-mails.
Press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged the outage during a briefing to reporters Monday afternoon. White House aides at the briefing had to pass out photocopies of the executive orders signed by the president that day, rather than e-mailing them to reporters. The outage, however, did not appear to cause any major disruptions at the White House.
White House spokesman Bill Burton said the outage was the result of a piece of old hardware in the data center breaking Monday morning.
"This caused a chain reaction with other systems, specifically the e-mail servers," he said. "We began the process of modernizing all of our technology infrastructure last week, and the faulty piece of hardware that broke has been replaced."
"In spite of it all, we enjoyed the opportunity to get out from behind our computers and meet with colleagues and visitors face to face," he added.