A shark in the water? The dangers of Guernsey’s rapid IT transfer

There’s an iconic scene in the film ‘Jaws’ when Chief Brody warns town officials about the threat of shark attacks, urging them to close the beaches. Mayor Vaughn refuses, fearing its impact on tourism. Disaster strikes.

Despite my Aussie roots, I’m no expert on sharks, but having formerly worked for Agilisys for six years, including leading the local team, I feel uniquely placed to highlight the IT challenges that now lie ahead in the wake of this transition.

I do so because it’s essential that deputies hold civil servants accountable for the promises and decisions that have been made if the island is to realise the benefits of its long-planned digital transformation.

As of midnight, Agilisys stopped managing the IT systems that underpin the island’s public services, spanning everything from education and policing to healthcare, benefits, planning, and beyond.

The States has now transitioned to a multi-vendor model, with responsibilities divided among several companies. In some cases, the transfer of services has taken two to three months; in others, less than a fortnight. Transitions of this scale and complexity are typically delivered over a period of 12 to 18 months, raising serious questions about the pace and planning of this handover.

The purpose of this article is not to pass judgement on the States’ decision to move away from Agilisys, but instead to underline the risks any large organisation faces when moving so quickly from a single supplier to a multi-vendor model.

Ensuring an orderly transition is vital. If it does go wrong, the impact will not be felt in committee meetings or strategy documents. Instead, it will be felt by islanders and businesses trying to access everyday services.

Justifications for the rapid transition have not been forthcoming. Even in the event of anticipated litigation, a longer transition could still have be planned and managed, given the provisions in the contract.

It’s the musical equivalent of asking a new conductor to take over a live symphony performance halfway through. No rehearsals, unfamiliar sheet music, and some of the musicians playing from custom-marked scores that only the previous conductor truly understands.

You might be technically skilled, but the tempo is theirs. Even the best conductor would struggle to bring it all back into sync without time to observe, rehearse and adjust.

That’s what complex business systems are like. Much of what keeps them working isn’t captured in a handover document. It lives in routines, habits, and tiny fixes that have developed over years. When someone new steps in to lead, they need time to understand how the piece is really being played.

In the case of the island’s IT services, the risk is less that everything stops working the day after the handover. Systems may appear fine on the surface while small issues quietly develop in the background. Missed updates, undocumented dependencies, gaps in support. Sometimes those issues cause a gradual decline in reliability. Other times, they sit unnoticed until a key service suddenly fails.

Since 2019, Agilisys has supported the States’ core IT operations, not just through day-to-day maintenance, but also by enabling long-term digital improvements, replacing legacy systems, strengthening resilience, and supporting innovation. This has included the infrastructure that underpins frontline services – networks, servers, cloud systems, and devices across departments, along with the helpdesk relied on by civil servants, teachers, clinicians and others.

A local team of more than 40 professionals, led by me, was established on-island, with staff transferred from the States and new recruits, backed up by a wider UK and India network, and a local and international supply chain, to support and deliver those services. Now, much of that collective knowledge will be lost through redundancies both on-island and in the UK.

Replacing that is not simply a matter of appointing new suppliers. It requires careful transfer of operational knowledge, new suppliers shadowing old, to provide continuity of support and detailed testing.

Officials initially expressed confidence that continuity will be maintained. More recently, however, that confidence has changed to one of ‘things will get worse before they get better’.

Then there is security. Transitions can introduce risks that are less visible but equally important. If cybersecurity responsibilities before, during and after transition are unclear, or processes are disrupted, the door is opened to potential vulnerabilities. Transitions need not just continuity, but resilience.

Islanders do not need to know who manages IT for the States. What matters is whether systems work as expected. Taxes must be collected, and benefits must be processed. Referrals need to go through. Schools and clinics should be able to rely on their systems without disruption. If those systems falter, the burden does not fall on the principle of a multi-vendor model. It falls on the people trying to deliver public services with the tools they are given.

Transitions do not usually fail in obvious ways. More often, the effects are incremental – reduced responsiveness, delayed updates, slower support. In normal circumstances, those issues can be resolved in the background. However, when a handover is rushed, the risk is that problems emerge without clear ownership, and recovery takes longer than it should.

This is not an argument for or against change. But, when the entire digital backbone of public services is involved, the priority must be getting the basics right before anything else.

As Guernsey enters this new phase, it is essential that the States is clear about what success will look like now and that deputies hold civil servants to account on the promises they have made. Ultimately, this transition must deliver defined benefits for islanders, both visible and behind the scenes.

Islanders should, for example, expect to see a measurable reduction in the risk of outages, tracked through system uptime reports, fewer hours of unplanned downtime, and a decrease in high-impact service disruptions. As civil servants deliver on their promise to improve the IT system, the cost of government should fall.

Improvements in public services should be reflected in reduced reliance on IT helpdesks, shorter resolution times for technical issues, and clearer feedback from service users through satisfaction surveys. For administrative processes such as taxes and benefits, success must be seen through faster processing, more assessments right first time, fewer manual interventions, and easier self-service.

Perhaps most importantly, digital transformation should result in better outcomes in key sectors like healthcare, for example, faster referral times, better integrated patient records, and increased use of digital tools by clinicians to support diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care.

These are not lofty ideals. They are the practical promises on which this transition is being sold, and it is against these promises that its success must be judged.

If extra time or resources are needed to make that happen safely, then that should be a serious consideration. It is better to make a steady transition than a hasty one with longer-term consequences.

For the sake of islanders, I hope the shift to a new model is successful. I want the services that matter to islanders to keep working without interruption. At the same time, it is important that the States takes seriously the complexity involved and the practical realities that come with handing over responsibility for critical infrastructure.

Guernsey may only get one chance to get this right. It must take it carefully.