John Coffelt, Editor

Manchester is implementing changes to its network and updating log-in credentials due in part to the wiping of data from a former employee’s city cellphone.

City IT Manager Erica Scott told the Finance Committee during the Nov. 18 meeting that, as part of the city-wide network upgrade, employees with city-issued phones would be able to use the Wi-Fi.

Scott said employees are currently not able to use the Wi-Fi, which creates problems for certain employees in places like the Water Department where cell reception is spotty. 

Mayor Joey Hobbs added that the city is changing the policy related to the username on city cellphones. Moving forward, city devices will use employee email as the username, and the city will own that username.

“Recently we have had a stream of employees who have resigned or quit and have wiped out every bit of data that is on their company phone,” Hobbs said.

“That is a huge issue with people wanting data between individuals because of an Open Records Act (request),” he said.

Hobbs said that under the new policy, the username and password for each city device will be the property of the city. Data wiped from any device could then be retrieved from the Cloud.

“We had a director leave us and he wiped everything out,” Hobbs said. “The DA has that phone today and I have full intentions of getting all that data. It’s just going to take longer.”

Hobbs said the effort to restore the phone’s data is not to search for any wrongdoing, rather to maintain legally required accessible public records. 

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.