Deputies start to lose patience as IT problems persist

Wednesday 14 December 2022

IT problems continue to blight the States two and a half weeks after an air conditioning failure took services offline.

Under questioning in the States about the ongoing problems, and with the States website again going down on Tuesday night and into today, Policy & Resources President Peter Ferbrache again said it was "unacceptable".

There are fears it could mean that payroll is not run this week, the States was told, while teachers still cannot send emails or record attendance.

An internal investigation is under way, but there was no commitment made to it being published in full or that an independent review would follow at this stage.

Pictured: The initial outage was blamed on fault air conditioning units in the server room at Sir Charles Frossard House.

“There’s no intention to hide anything, the public are entitled to know, States members are entitled to know," said Deputy Ferbrache.

"It’s not acceptable in the 21st Century that the States is in the position that it is in three weeks on."

While he said a summary of the internal investigation will be published, he said there may or may not be commercial matters or issues that affect States IT security that meant it could not be released in full.

Consideration would be given to whether an independent investigation was needed once that initial report was reviewed.

He conceded that the failure was damaging the States’ reputation.

Former P&R member Heidi Soulsby led the questioning about the IT issues.

Deputy Ferbrache confirmed that Agilisys, which has a 10-year contract to modernise States IT systems, was not responsible for maintaining, testing or responding to the warning system in place to alert when the equipment room at Frossard House gets too hot.

It was also not responsible for maintaining or testing the air conditioning system.

He repeated assurances that no data had been lost.

Pictured: The Bailiff, Richard McMahon, refused to allow some questions regarding the IT issues to be asked or answered as they did not fit with the rules of procedure.

An attempt by both Deputy Soulsby and Deputy Gavin St Pier to ask questions to find out who was responsible for the warning system were blocked by the Bailiff after he ruled they did not arise from the answers given.

He also ruled out a question by Deputy Andrew Taylor about whether consideration would be given to renegotiating the contract with Agilisys.

Home Affairs President Rob Prow also touched on the IT problems after being questioned by Deputy Victoria Oliver about progress his committee had made since issues were raised in a HMIC report from 2018.

Deputy Prow said that the state of IT must be a concern to everyone in the Assembly, not just his committee.

He said that some of the transformation aspects of the HMIC report had been resolved and some were “work in progress’’.