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P&R faces scrutiny over IT crash

P&R faces scrutiny over IT crash

Tuesday 13 December 2022

P&R faces scrutiny over IT crash

Tuesday 13 December 2022


Deputy Heidi Soulsby is calling for an independent review into States' IT failures which recently caused customers and staff days of disruption.

She believes that internal reviews carried out by the States themselves are inadequate given the seriousness of the IT outage and the length of time it lasted.

Deputy Soulsby, who announced her resignation as Vice President of the Policy & Resources Committee towards the end of October, has tabled five questions about the IT meltdown which will be answered by the Committee's President, Deputy Peter Ferbrache, at tomorrow's States' meeting.

Her questions include asking the Committee whether it thinks "there should be an independent review into what happened rather than an internal incident report".

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Pictured: Deputy Heidi Soulsby will use tomorrow's States' meeting to ask a series of questions about the States' recent IT failure.

"Whether or not data has been lost, this has been a serious incident," Deputy Soulsby told Express.

"It does seem a series of very unfortunate events have happened with the air conditioning system back up not working, the warning system not enabling anyone to get on site before the servers shut down, and a failure of the switchover to Edward T Wheadon House.

"It has resulted in considerable inconvenience to a lot of individuals and organisations and has resulted in reputational damage.

"It is really important that there should be an independent audit into what actually happened and to provide recommendations for the future to minimise such an event happening again."

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Pictured: The payment of benefits was one of numerous services disrupted when the States' IT system crashed on 25 November.

The States' IT system crashed on 25 November when a server room at Sir Charles Frossard House overheated and back up plans failed. Services and users were disrupted for several days as States' staff, technicians from Agilisys, the States' IT partner, and other contractors tried to work out what went wrong and put it right.

A week later, with services still not fully restored, Deputy Ferbrache said he wanted answers. 

"Clearly, the circumstances of the last week are not good enough, despite the significant amount of work from engineers who have been trying to get systems back up and staff across services managing any disruption," he said. "Being a week in and not fully operational is concerning and we need answers as quickly as possible.

"Our Committee, States' members and the wider community understandably want answers in language we can understand, and importantly reassurance about what will happen to make sure we never see a repeat. We will be expecting those answers after things are back to normal."

Mark de Garis, the Head of the Public Service, said at the time:  "An outage such as we have experienced over the last week is unacceptable and urgent actions are being taken to fully understand how this happened."

The States' Assembly has its first opportunity tomorrow to discuss the problems publicly. In addition to Deputy Soulsby's five questions to the Committee, Deputy Ferbrache's replies could prompt supplementary questions without notice.

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Pictured: Deputy Soulsby is pressing her former colleagues on the Policy & Resources Committee to agree to an independent investigation of what went wrong and how any repeat can be avoided.

Deputy Soulsby wants to know whether Agilisys is responsible for maintaining, testing and responding to the temperature warning system at Sir Charles Frossard House.

"The States have entered into a 10-year contract amounting to over £20million per annum to manage its IT systems. It is important to know whether this includes all systems," said Deputy Soulsby.

"I also understood that all equipment should have been moved from Sir Charles Frossard House by now and that this was the responsibility of Agilisys.

"It is important to know who is responsible for maintaining the environment. In this case, the warning system. There should be some sort of escalation system in place such that a number of people should be aware of something.

"It seems odd having a warning system that means people can't get to the site fast enough to do anything before the servers shut down."

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Pictured: Some of Deputy Soulsby's questions and possibly other members' supplementary questions without notice will focus on equipment which failed at Sir Charles Frossard House. 

Deputy Soulsby also wants to know if Agilisys is responsible for maintaining and testing air conditioning systems which reportedly failed in the server room at Sir Charles Frossard House. 

"If the air conditioning system was tested on a frequent basis, the probability of multiple failure would be significantly reduced," she said.

She will ask Deputy Ferbrache to clarify whether the States lost data stored in servers at Sir Charles Frossard House. The States have said that no live data were lost but Deputy Soulsby said she had "concerns that other data may have been compromised".

And she will seek an assurance that "air conditioning systems, notification systems and back-up generators at Sir Charles Frossard House and Edward T Wheadon House are now working satisfactorily and in accordance with the States’ contract with Agilisys".

"I have avoided detailed questions, but have asked for more information over specifics that I have been advised will be included in the incident report," said Deputy Soulsby.

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