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The ODPA (Office of the Data Protection Authority) has launched an inquiry into the well documented States IT outages.
A major incident last year saw multiple failsafe systems not function as expected, critical equipment in use not being resilient enough, other equipment which should have been in place non-existent or broken, and ineffective monitoring of conditions in the data rooms located in government buildings.
An independent report into States IT issues was published by PwC in June. It highlighted a raft of issues with how the States’ IT infrastructure was being maintained.
The ODPA has now launched an inquiry of its own. In a public statement it said: “The Office of the Data Protection Authority (ODPA) has begun an inquiry in relation to data room service outages that affected the States of Guernsey’s IT systems between November 2022 – January 2023.”
It said the inquiry has been launched after “consideration of the full text of PWC’s ‘Major Incident Review’”.
“The report was requested from the Policy & Resources Committee as part of the initial assessment of this matter and using the Authority’s powers to require a controller or processor to provide information.
“The Inquiry seeks to establish the manner and extent to which the Controller has complied with the requirements of the Law including those aspects relating to data availability and resilience.
"Section 69 of The Data Protection (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2017 gives the Authority powers to launch an inquiry at its own discretion. The Authority can launch a formal inquiry where there are concerns about a controller’s activities or their compliance with the Law. It is not necessary for there to have been a complaint about a controller or processor’s activities for this type of inquiry to be undertaken.”
The Authority is inviting anyone who may have been impacted by the outages to contact the ODPA Investigation Team via email: casework@odpa.gg
Failure to maintain ageing States IT contributed to catastrophe
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