The man who changed my view of government workers

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My faith in government employees has been restored, thanks to Hugh McArtan.

Most folks in Charlotte might not know Hugh. I didn’t know the guy existed until last week.

Hugh works for the county in its Information Services and Technology division. His responsibilities include overseeing firewalls and security for charmeck.org. It’s probably a thankless job, despite the importance of keeping hackers from taking out a government website that lots of businesspeople use every day.

I’m one of those people who rely on the site to do my job. For one, I often use it to research building permit activity, to see how residential and commercial construction is faring.

In fact, I came to meet Hugh when the building permit search engine crashed a week ago today.

That morning, I couldn’t pull the site up. “The specified URL cannot be found” is the message I would get.

Slightly panicked (I needed some building permit data that morning to meet a deadline), I called 311, the city’s help line, because, well, I needed help.

The person who answered the phone told me I’d need to call the department whose site was down, that she could not help me. I contacted the code enforcement office, which gave me a bunch of options: Press 1 for this. Press 2 for that. And so on.

Not knowing which part of the code enforcement office would be able to help me, I pressed the first number that came to mind. I can’t recall what number it was.

The person I got on the phone said he wasn’t the right one to fix the problem. He told me to call 311 again and ask for something called “IST.” At the time, I had no clue what IST was.

Anyway, I called 311. A lady with a heavy accent answered. I told her I need IST. She sounded confused, as if she had never heard of such a thing.

“I’m just trying to see which number I need to refer you,” she said.

She puts me on hold for about two minutes. Then she came back on the phone.

“I’m trying to get a supervisor,” she said. “You said IST, right?”

Right, I said.

I was put on hold again. A short time later, she came back on the line

“Thank you for your time for holding,” she said. “I’m going to transfer you. Thank you for calling Charmeck 311.”

I was then sent to the “Technology Service Center,” or something like that.  A guy answered the phone. I explained to him that the building permit search feature was not working. Like everyone I spoke with at 311, he didn’t seem to know what webpage I was talking about.

“Let me get this ticket opened up real quick,” he said.

Later that morning, I got a phone call. It was Hugh. He introduced himself, told me that the site appeared to be working again, although he wasn’t sure why it went down in the first place. The county doesn’t own the application, he said, adding that there was a problem with it the day before.

But Hugh wanted me to know that he was looking into it and planned to have some server/admin/application people investigate the problem. He thanked me for reporting it.

It was then that I told Hugh who I was, that I use the building permit search tool a lot, that I was impressed that a government worker would take the time to call someone who had reported a problem with the website and let them know he was trying to resolve it.

Hugh told me he was born and raised in North Carolina. He went to UNCC and has been in Charlotte since 1972. He’s worked for the county for 15 years.

“I just want to do a good job and want things to work right,” he said.

We talked for about half and hour, and I told him I would probably write a column about him.

And here it is.

Thanks, Hugh. I will never look at government workers the same way again … maybe.

Editor Deon Roberts can be reached at [email protected].