Sites down
All,
The court order for this shut down wasn't the blanket shut down we had in 2001. This time, all of USGS and the Park Service remained on line.
As for Reclamation, we are currently working on getting the more crucial data and employees on line. All of our websites, to the best of my knowledge, came on-line yesterday. Only those websites deemed "essential" will remain on line after today. The same goes for employee e-mail access. I imagine BLM and the other Interior agencies are going through a similar process as Reclamation.
The previous posts about why this shut down has occurred are pretty accurate. The latest I heard is that the Chief Information Officer for all of the Department of the Interior was asked to swear that all of the bureaus etc. under Interior had secure systems that could not be hacked into; and, of course, he couldn't swear to that.
I'm hoping I'll be deemed "essential" (who doesn't hope that?

). If so, I'll be able to keep sending out local stream flows and reservoir releases as we get into run-off here in eastern CO.
Best,
Kara