A server problem put most New Jersey government websites offline for much of Monday, including a page detailing state financial data that was the subject of story in The Record on Monday.

The website, www.yourmoney.nj.gov, was among several state government sites affected by the failure of a cooling unit that is used to keep state servers from overheating, said Andrew Pratt, a spokesman for the state Department of Treasury.

The cooling unit failure, which occurred Monday morning, forced state officials to shut down many state servers to prevent damage from overheating, said Pratt, whose department maintains the financial website.

The server shutdown affected many of state government’s most-used sites, including the Motor Vehicle Commission’s page and the state Treasurer’s commercial recording page. Some of the government websites, including the state’s homepage, www.state.nj.us, briefly were back online by 4 p.m. but were subject to lengthy outages into the evening.

Pratt said it was pure coincidence that the problem occurred on Cyber Monday, the busiest online shopping day of the year.

The server shutdown also coincided with The Record’s publishing of a story on Monday that highlighted financial information from some of the state’s largest independent authorities that is now available at www.yourmoney.nj.gov.

The website — which Governor Christie launched earlier this year with searchable state budget, debt and payroll information — can now be used to view spending and revenue reports for many state authorities, including the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority. Payroll information for the authorities soon will be posted on the site as well, state officials said.

The 19 authorities tracked by the state for the website spend billions in public money every year, but are often overlooked by the public. The information on the authorities was added to the site as part of Christie’s effort to bring more accountability to public agencies outside state government, administration officials said.

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(Source: NorthJersey.com)