There were faults on a lot of sides – Ferbrache
A CATALOGUE of errors leading to IT failures at the States of Guernsey have been unveiled in an independent review, published today.
Neglect of old but critical equipment and technology, absence of formal procedures, and unclear definition of responsibilities between the States and contractors Agilisys, are among the root causes identified by PwC in a crisis and resilience report.
Four main incidents occurred between November 2022 and January 2023 as a result of collapsing infrastructure within the States’ systems.
‘There were errors made, there were faults on lots of sides, but I am not aware that we, the current regime, did anything untoward,’ said Policy & Resources president Peter Ferbrache.
‘What occurred in November occurred through a basic condition of human error, but it wasn’t that one person who is responsible for all of these ills.’
Sir Charles Frossard House and Edward T Wheadon House historically distributed services as part of a 'legacy estate' and Agilisys set out to modernise this to a ‘transformed estate’.
PwC found that there was no definition of responsibilities associated with the maintenance and management of the legacy estate.
The generator which was in place was not in service, and there was no generator for one of the two legacy data rooms.
‘There is still the possibility of an outage, but much less than it was before as a consequence of what we’ve gone through,’ said P&R IT lead Deputy Bob Murray.
‘Transformation has been occurring all the way through, and quite a large proportion of the legacy estate has been transformed into much more secure and purposeful environment at this stage.’
PwC said that its assessment of the disruption caused by the incidents was limited by the availability of documentation relating to the legacy estate.
It also found that there were delays in the migration from legacy rooms to the new data centres, and by December 2022, a planned 18-month project had turned into 36 months of elapsed time, with about 50% of all IT services left to move.
The States blamed numerous issues for the delays, including under-estimating the complexity of the migration, a lack of programme and project staff continuity at Agilisys and the States, and logistical challenges associated with the Covid pandemic.
No single person has been found to be responsible for issues with the response after the alerts were given of the incident.
