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Policy & Resources expect to have implemented most of the top IT resilience recommendations by this autumn.
It comes after an independent report, produced by PwC, found systemic and strategic failings in the management of old public IT systems and the contract with States IT partner Agilisys.
Industry had called for a clear roadmap to meet the top priority action points by the end of the year, with regular public updates.
P&R also confirmed that the incident response to the series of outages cost approximately £250,000.
But it has been unable to confirm the cost of the unanticipated improvements to IT hardware, accelerating elements of the transformation programme, and meeting PwC’s strategic recommendations.
It said “work is yet to be finalized” on this and will likely come when P&R publishes its funding and investment plan for all public services and government business in late summer.
Pictured: Some of the key recommendations provided to the States by PwC.
PwC provided a long list of recommendations to the States, 22 of which were classified as “P1” - meaning top priority.
Its report stated that “the risk of not addressing these recommendations will be that in the event of future SoG response efforts will not be as rapid, coordinated or efficient as they could otherwise be and or issues manifest undetected”.
These included speeding up the migration of old data out of old systems, deciding whether the States or Agilisys are in charge of maintaining ageing public hardware, and addressing other gaps in the contract with the IT provider.
The firm also suggested that the States establish a project management team to oversee and coordinate the implementation of the recommendations.
Some of these recommendations are already said to have been implemented.
Five new staff are also being recruited to the States, it's been confirmed, to focus on IT services after the Head of the Public Service, Mark de Garis, told Express specialist staff would be brought back in-house to improve public sector understanding and accountability on the tech.
This approach has been questioned by a sitting deputy with years’ worth of IT experience.
Following questions from Express, the Committee also insisted that the emergency services were only minorly affected by the period of IT blackout, which started last November.
“All core systems for blue light services operated as normal. The impacts of the outages were minor for these service areas and services were largely unaffected,” it said.
P&R added that progress updates are being “continuously provided” to the committee and senior civil servants along the way, with Deputy Peter Ferbrache to periodically update States members and the community in update statements delivered to the States Assembly.
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