As we reported last week, the Wisconsin Campaign Finance Information System has been down since last Monday. This normally publicly-available online database contains a record of all state campaign finance reports dating back more than a decade.

While the website is again operational, the Ethics Commission is urging the public to refrain from using it.

While CFIS appears like it is available, we are still working on it. There will be periodic outages. Please do not try to use CFIS until we email you indicating that CFIS is ready for use.

WI Ethics Commission

On Friday, a day after our report, the Ethics Commission alerted the public to the outage:

“On Monday, September 9, the Wisconsin Ethics Commission website experienced a temporary disruption. The campaign finance information system (CFIS), lobbying website, and statement of economic interest (SEI) website were temporarily taken offline while the state’s cybersecurity team investigated suspicious activity. As of Tuesday, September 10, the lobbying website and SEI websites were restored. The CFIS services are expected to be restored in a few days’ time. The systems affected by the outage primarily contain public data that is otherwise publicly available on the website. Security investigation and analysis so far has not uncovered any indications of a data breach, but the Department’s Division of Enterprise Technology is collaborating with the Commission to continue recovery and monitoring to ensure a prompt return to normal operations“

The stated mission of the agency is to “promote and strengthen the faith and confidence of the people of Wisconsin in their government, support the operation of open and responsible government, preserve the integrity of the governmental decision-making process, and protect the rights of individuals through the administration of Wisconsin’s campaign finance, lobbying, and ethics laws, and through readily available and understandable disclosure of information.”

The Commission has not disclosed the source or extent of the problem with the CFIS.

We will update this story as it develops.