and the PR statement from Karen Arena of Xerox: "During a routine test of our back-up systems Saturday morning, Xerox’s Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system experienced a temporary shutdown. While the system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits. This disruption impacts EBT beneficiaries who rely on the system for SNAP and WIC. Technical staff is addressing the issue and expect the system to be restored soon. Beneficiaries requiring access to their benefits can work with their local retailers who can activate an emergency voucher system where available. We appreciate our clients’ patience while we work through this outage as quickly as possible" On Sat, Oct 12, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Edward Vielmetti <edward.vielmetti@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's a roundup of stories from the media; the outage affects multiple states including Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Oklahoma, and others that use ACS (a division of Xerox) as their processor for EBT transactions.

http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2013/10/ebt-systems-down-in-multiple-sta...

I've sent a note to the Xerox PR contact in the hopes of pinning them down to whether it's a power outage, a software update, or a telecom issue that is the root cause.

thanks

Ed

-- Edward Vielmetti +1 734 330 2465 edward.vielmetti@gmail.com

-- Edward Vielmetti +1 734 330 2465 edward.vielmetti@gmail.com