Full investigation into Guernsey States IT failures

An investigation into IT failures at the States of Guernsey is ongoing

An investigation is ongoing into IT failures at the States of Guernsey that had a wide-ranging impact.

Online systems started having problems on 25 November after an air-conditioning unit in a main computer server room failed.

The failure affected the States' website, income support payments and wi-fi in schools across Guernsey.

Mark de Garis, head of the public service, said: "It should not have happened and I apologise again."

He promised "no data was lost" in the incident.

Mr de Garis said there were several parties involved in the investigation into the system failure.

He said: "We will cut through all of that to establish very clear lines of accountability."

He added he was "very happy" with the performance of Agilysis, the firm which manages the States of Guernsey information technology.

Analysis by BBC Guernsey Political Reporter John Fernandez

"A disaster", "heads should roll", "embarrassing" - a small assortment of the reaction from politicians to recent IT outages.

Now the island's top civil servant has confirmed there will be a full investigation into what has caused the latest online issues.

Key amongst the questions it will need to answer is, who's responsible? Agilysis, the company responsible for States IT transformation, the States of Guernsey, or perhaps a mix of both.

With some politicians behind the scenes already baying for blood, there's a concern this investigation and the ongoing scrutiny review will come to nothing.

Mr de Garis defended the States' response to the incident.

He said: "We restored services very quickly. We prioritised which services needed to be restored."

Mr de Garis said it was going to be "extremely complicated" to find out exactly what had happened and why.

He said all of the findings and recommendations and cost of the incident would be made available to the public.

"We will be transparent," he said.

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