VT Alerts Working Through User, Technical Glitches

Virginia Tech’s new system of emergency alerts, VT Alerts, needs some tweaking after many claim they did not receive the test alert message sent on Wednesday.

Mark Owczarski, director of news and information in University Relations, said that as of 3 p.m. Thursday, around 1,000 people who answered the VT Alerts survey claimed that they did not receive the message. Two thousand people took the survey, sent by e-mail from University Relations.

“The system has been sending out messages, but the receiving has been very unpredictable,” said Michael Dame, director of university web communications.

According to a press release by University Relations on Thursday, 18,266 people have registered for VT Alerts since July. The system notifies people of emergencies through voice mails, text messages, instant messages or e-mail to non-Virginia Tech addresses.

Owczarski said that it could be as little as one week before VT Alerts is publicly tested again.

“There are among dozens of reasons why someone didn’t get a message,” Owczarski said. “There so many variables, some trends or some clusters that we can address, but that’s precisely why you do the tests.

“There are a lot of the questions of why they didn’t get it. It’s going to take us time to figure out.”

Owczarski wouldn’t say what steps would be taken after the analysis.

“The possibilities of what we discover are fairly broad,” Owczarski said. “We want to look at the data and see what that data tells, and then take our next step.”

Dame said that University Relations has made several calls since the test to National Notification Network (3n), a California-based company that is supplying the technology for VT Alerts.

“We work with them on a very active basis as they go through the implementation process,” said Marc Ladin, vice president of marketing for 3n.

Simple typos on registrations may be one reason why some didn’t receive messages. Owczarski said that estimates up to this point say that 10-15 percent of people who did not receive the message had typos on their registrations.

Or maybe some people simply forgot to check everywhere. People can sign up for up to three methods of receiving messages.

“Not having their phone on, instant messenger, not checking their e-mail, anything that interrupts the system is going to interrupt VT Alerts,” said Brendan McKagen, computer systems engineer for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

Still, other problems get more technical.

Dropped calls may also account for some of the missed messages. University Relations stated in a press release on Thursday that 77 percent of people who registered for VT Alerts registered for text messaging, while 34 percent registered for cell phone voice mails.

“When you send out potential 40,000 messages, there may be some network issues,” Owczarki said.

Text messaging has inherent problems as a method of emergency alerts. Andy Guess, a writer for Inside Higher Ed, a news website on higher education, wrote an article about the rise of text messaging as a means for alerts around. Cost, privacy concerns and length of the messages. Some cell-phone carriers may have identified VT Alerts, a mass message system, as spam.

 “We’re investigating to see if that’s happening with VT Alerts,” Dame said.

Dame said that it’s important for subscribers to sign up for other points of contact in addition to text messaging. The first point of contact for 72 percent of subscribers is text messaging. Forty-three percent of subscribers signed up for only one point of contact.

“Text messaging is great, but don’t make that your only point of contact,” Dame said.

Another may be the settings on instant message systems. Systems such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo! require receivers to set them so they accept messages from the university.

Some users may have not received the message because they were not the first contact. VT Alerts allows subscribers to confirm that they received the message. If the message is confirmed at the first contact, it will not go to the second or third. If a subscriber lists a friend or relative as the first point of contact, he/she will not get the message if it is confirmed by the first contact.

“The reason for that is that the system doesn’t send unnecessary messages, because we’re talking about tens of thousands of messages,” Owczarski said.

Owczarski said VT Alerts will continue its marketing strategies as before. There have been around 40 methods of information delivery since VT Alerts launched, including blast emails, table cards in dining halls and information during student orientation.

“The educational opportunities will continue for as long as we offer the service,” Owczarski said.

“A lot of that is educational, as opposed to I didn’t get my message. And again, that’s why we test.”