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Forget golf pylons or missing tortoises - the report into the States’ IT outages should be firmly in your mind this week.
That’s no disrespect to Tim who has fortunately been reunited with her owner, or the many residents who have had their view suddenly spoiled by massive masts at La Grande Mare.
But they pale to what went down one cold November night last year - the fallout of which was set in train years before what Chief Minister Peter Ferbrache labeled a “dark day” for the island.
Out of date equipment in dire need of replacement, back-up generators left to gather dust, incorrect email addresses and phone numbers logged for emergencies, and big flashing danger signs both ignored and unnoticed.
The report is a damning indictment of a government incapable of maintaining its own house.
We were promised ‘SMART government’ through the 10-year outsourced overhaul of digital public services, to make the future “simple”.
The aim, in the governments’ own words, was for the transformation to make the States “the best public service of any small jurisdiction”.
What transpired up to November 2022 was INCOMPETENT government.
Above all, it was a testament to ignoring the warning signs.
Worse still, those who worked long days and nights to fix the mess of others were flying by the seat of their pants, as no one drew up an internationally-acceptable plan for such an emergency.
That is the minimum expectation of the public.
The probe into events is well researched. Some of the information publicly provided has been understandably redacted to protect the identity of individuals, sensitive government structures, and the location and operation of critical infrastructure.
However the result is that some of the States’ black marker penning is hilariously yet needlessly included:
Well, at least we know that at 07:00 on 13 December, something happened – and it was good.
Things now aren’t as good. As well as millions more having to be spent on getting IT in line, PwC have found the transformation itself wasn’t happening fast enough to begin with.
Note checking and conversations since then also show inconsistent public positions being taken with regards to the progress of the transformation programme.
Top tech stakeholders in the community were being told in early 2019 that the transfer of old States systems into a fresh server environment was nearly three quarters complete. Express was later told by the-then boss of Agilisys that this process was roughly 50% complete in March 2021. PwC’s report, published just this week, said around half that work is still yet to be done.
Needless to say, good things have and will come out of the transformation. Agilisys also had to quickly drop routine work to quickly design online portals for testing, travel, and vaccination during the pandemic.
And while our IT partner has been the target of heavy public criticism since the contract was signed, it is actually the States that allowed confusion over responsibilities to reign and didn’t get it together to take the necessary action.
The buck must stop with the public sector in these contracts.
It seems that despite all the resources of government, its expected obsession with oversight, and access to handsomely paid law officers, gaps in the contract were a kink that couldn't, or wouldn’t, be ironed out.
It shouldn’t be hard to imagine the government getting on replacing the first faulty air con - the one that failed a full five months before the other one which brought the system down - and worrying about who to send the final bill to later.
But as is often the case, it takes a sudden emergency to expose the worst of things.
Only limited numbers of people had thought about how you may go about raising a 10,000kg tin can from the bottom of the seabed using robots before the Titan submersible disappeared. That was until it did.
Those poor souls don’t get a second chance. The States however do have an opportunity to turn things around and prove it to us.
Hopefully they can handle the heat.
Failure to maintain ageing States IT contributed to catastrophe
