De Blasio: NYC wireless network crash is unacceptable

Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to stand by his embattled technology commissioner on Monday as the city’s internal wireless network remained hobbled by a bug that the feds had warned was coming a year ago.

“I’ve said very clearly there needs to be a very thorough, very technical review on why this happened,” the mayor said when asked if Samir Saini, commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, should resign.

“I don’t understand why it happened, I don’t think it’s acceptable that it happened and I need to understand exactly what happened here and then we’ll make decisions from there,” de Blasio added.

He offered no words of support for Saini.

The network, known as NYCWiN, powers many Police Department license plate readers, allows the Transportation Department to monitor traffic signals and helps network the Parks and Sanitation Departments.

The system was disrupted by a widely anticipated Y2k-like bug that federal experts warned a year ago would cripple technology devices and networks that weren’t updated. Most were, but NYCWiN was not and it crashed on April 6.

City officials have been trying to get it back ever since.

Defense contractor Northrop Grumman built the half-billion dollar system and is supposed to maintain it as part of a $40-million-a-year contract.