[CCS]

This seems serious
Posted by Clare Curran on September 26th, 2011

Have just seen via Computerworld that 14 Government websites will be offline til Wednesday as the result of a failed system upgrade over the weekend. Upgrades aren’t always successful but surely there should have been a contingency plan in place to roll them back.

Seems like an IT fail. Perhaps Mr Joyce would care to explain? Or Nathan Guy? Or someone else?

The websites are:

business.govt
Companies Office
Ministry of Consumer Affairs
Financial Service Providers Register (FSPR)
G2B
Government Procurement Solutions
Insolvency and Trustee Service
Intellectual Property Office (IPONZ)
Motor Vehicle Traders Register
New Zealand Petroleum & Minerals
Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR)
Radio Spectrum Management
Societies and Trusts
VolunteerNet
Business Data

The outage notice on the MED website says this:

Outage notice

We apologise unreservedly for any inconvenience experienced as a result of this outage. Please read on for further information about the impact of this outage.

The Ministry of Economic Development is working to resolve an outage affecting a number of its websites.

The outage occurred during preparation work on Saturday evening to upgrade the servers hosting these websites. The websites will be unavailable until at least midday 12:00PM NZST Wednesday 28 September.


8 Responses to “This seems serious”

sweetd says:
September 26, 2011 at 5:05 pm

Clare, would you say this is as serious as running a database server connected to the internet with no security for several months?
Tribeless says:
September 26, 2011 at 5:17 pm

Don’t panic Clare. This is simply what happens when politicians, of any persuasion, try to run anything. That’s why it’s best you don’t. But I know, you all just want to help … (down the road to serfdom).
tbird says:
September 26, 2011 at 6:38 pm

The other day I scraped my wing mirror against a carpark wall. Steven Joyce hasn’t done a thing about it.

Once I cut myself while chopping vegetables. It didn’t need a Bandaid, but I’m considering contacting Tony Ryall about this directly.

And just when is Phil Heatley coming around to change the lightbulb in the hallway?
insumnatio says:
September 26, 2011 at 7:05 pm

If sky goes down mid-final will that be stephen joyce AND Murray McCully’s fault?
Whafe says:
September 26, 2011 at 8:07 pm

Sheesh Clare, what a coup this post is.

It is so so Mr Joyce’s fault…… NOT.

I don’t at all think Labour is in any position to be critical of any online websites etc, as sweetd mentions above, your team really couldnt sort a website securely….

This is really stooping lower than low
Dion says:
September 26, 2011 at 8:53 pm

Claire – in reality it was probably a civil servant.
Patrick says:
September 26, 2011 at 10:27 pm

Speaking as someone who works in this area, this is a massive stuff up. Someone should be accountable for it.

I’d be interested to know what sort of service agreement is covering this – I’ve never heard of this sort of problem resulting in multiple days of downtime. Is it a result of cuts to back room services? And if so, how much is now being spent to fix it?

Then again, perhaps it’s just the Insolvency and Trustee Service struggling to deal with the load from a certain Wellington High Court proceeding…
Bea says:
September 26, 2011 at 10:40 pm

I disagree Whafe – the Labour opposition should be jumping up and down about this. Having those sites down for that length of time certainly buggered me up today and I in turn have had to push back deadlines I’d promised to clients. Its a big deal.

I don't know how Steven Joyce can explain when he's busy with his sleeves rolled up and fixing some hardware issues