The academic records of 7,854 high-school students have been lost due to a hard-drive failure, the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
The records were being stored at National Chi Nan University, which was commissioned by the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration to host a computer server of student portfolios that universities could access to evaluate their applications.
Under a program introduced in 2019 for high-school students starting that year, students are to create portfolios to be used for university applications, which include their grades, extracurricular activities and other information related to their character and achievements.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
System administrators discovered that files were missing when rebooting the system, the ministry said, adding that 25,210 files for 7,854 students from 81 schools were lost.
On Sept. 5, the university began moving the files into a centralized system to meet government information-security regulations, which require bottom-up management of protected information, the ministry said.
“The files were moved to a virtual machine in the university’s new server room. On Wednesday, the system had to be restarted due to an update, which is when the problem was discovered,” it said.
K-12 Education Administration official Chang Yung-chieh (張永傑) said the issue appears to have affected only students who uploaded their information to the system between Sept. 5 and Wednesday.
Information uploaded prior to Sept. 5 has been backed up, he added.
The administration had already contacted the system’s software developer for assistance with file recovery, he said, adding that the developer had also contacted the affected students’ schools to inform them.
Students with their own copies of the missing files should re-upload them as soon as possible, he said.
“We have already checked all of the systems to ensure there are no more errors in the settings that would cause a repeat of the incident,” he said. “We are also requiring that the system be monitored by two different people every day, as a preventive measure.”
The administration would also require backup files to be maintained and stored in the university’s server room, as well as at an offsite location, he said.
“We are deeply sorry to the students and teachers affected, and will make the students’ rights and interests our top priority in handling the matter,” he said.
National Senior High School Teachers’ Union chairman Kao Meng-lin (高孟琳) said the incident would harm the public’s impression of the new portfolio system, adding that the issue must be treated seriously.
Parents should not panic, as students can still submit preliminary documents for their university applications, and provide other portfolio documents later when they are recovered, Kao said.
The coast guard drove away 567 Chinese boats and seized seven illegally operating in Taiwanese waters in the first six months of this year, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. They mostly operated near Kinmen and Penghu counties, resulting in fines totaling NT$1.7 million (US$52,440), it said. Three ships — two near Kinmen County and one near Penghu County — were detained in January for illegally crossing the border, while one ship each was detained near Kinmen in February and Penghu in March respectively, it said. The ship seized near Penghu in January was the Yun Ao (雲澳), detained by the CGA’s
The entire Alishan Forest Railway line is to reopen for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, with tickets to go on sale at 2pm today. The historic railway from Chiayi to Alishan (阿里山) is finally set to reopen after the completion of the final No. 42 tunnel, Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office Deputy Director-General Chou Heng-kai (周恆凱) said. It is to run on a new timetable, with four trains daily, he said. The 9am train is to depart from Chiayi Railway Station bound for Shizilu Station (十字路), while the 10am train departing from Chiayi is to go all the
FLU CONTINUES: Hospitals reported 101,091 visits for flu-like illnesses last week, while 68 severe cases and 16 flu-related deaths were also reported, the CDC said The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported 932 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and 64 related deaths for last week, adding that the number of people who had contracted new SARS-CoV-2 subvariants KP.2 and LB.1 has increased. The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 increased from 815 in the previous week to 932 last week, while 90 percent of the 64 deceased were aged 65 or older, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. JN.1 was still the dominant variant among local and imported cases in the past four weeks, while KP.2 was the second-most common, Lin said. Cases with the LB.1 subvariant
Beijing’s recent provocative actions against the Philippines in the South China Sea were partly meant as a “dress rehearsal” for the invasion of Taiwan, former US deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger said at a Heritage Foundation forum in Washington on Tuesday. Beijing’s blocking of a Philippine resupply mission on June 17 with unprecedented violence had multiple implications. “What they’re doing is trying to demonstrate that they can blockade, create a sense of futility and discredit the idea that the United States is going to help not only the Philippines, but by extension Taiwan,” Pottinger said. Pottinger was referring to a clash