U.K. government hit with another large computer failure
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As many as 80,000 civil servants at the U.K.'s Department of Work and Pensions had to deal with what is being described as the biggest computer crash in government history on Monday.
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Large swathes of Asia, the Middle East and north Africa had their high-technology services crippled today after a widespread Internet failure that brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.
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After the Child Support Agency (CSA) debacle earlier this month, when it emerged that the Â£450m system built by EDS still isn&#39;t working properly a year and a half after its supposed completion, the DWP crash seemed impossibly incompetent.
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We don't care so they don't care The latest data giveaway by the UK's Ministry of Defence shows that not even the most basic IT policies are being followed.â¦
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A routine software upgrade of desktop PCs at the Department of Work and Pensions has left 80% of the ministry&#39;s computers unable to send or receive e-mails.
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Staff at the United Kingdom's Department for Work and Pensions were unable to use their PCs this week after a routine software upgrade knocked out 80 percent of the computers in the sprawling department.
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A Â£141m computer system used to process benefits payments is scrapped, the BBC learns.
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By ANDREW DENHOLM EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT  THOUSANDS of primary school children are still without any "meaningful" computer access a month after the introduction of a new system worth GBP15.5m, teachers claimed yesterday.
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Experts are concerned that data may not being properly protected by the IRS and that a massive data loss by the agency, similar to the one last month by the U.K.'s Revenue and Customs office, could disrupt the nation's banking system.
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An error during routine system testing of United's computer system was the preliminary root cause of yesterday's Computer failure.
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The latest Government computer crash at the Department of Work and Pensions shows the folly of the Government plans to axe all existing emergency fire control rooms.
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And then there were two The UK government is spending Â£208m per year on running websites but many of them are text heavy and crammed with policy information that citizens couldnât give a monkeyâs about.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The U.K.'s trial of e-voting and e-counting technologies during last month's local elections resulted in crashed computers and technicians scratching their heads while posing new concerns about the systems' security and reliability, a new report has concluded. In one area of England, a manual recount performed after e-counting equipment was abandoned because of delays turned up a raft of uncounted votes, said Jason Kitcat, e-voting coordinator for the Open Rights Group, which deployed observers to polling sites in England and Scotland. The group, which has been critical of e-voting and e-counting, has submitted its 64-page report to the U.K. Electoral Commission, which will publish its own report on the trials on Aug. 3. The Department for Constitutional Affairs, which oversaw the pilot programs, said it welcomed the role of observers but would reserve comment until the Electoral Commission publishes its report. The Electoral Commission also did not comment. The U.K., which embarked on a voting modernization program in 2000, held trials in 13 administrative areas in England. Scotland replaced manual counting with e-counting technologies for the first time. The government has backed e-voting technologies, including postal voting and Internet voting, to increase voter participation. Open Rights Group volunteers watched how polling stations conducted e-voting, but much of the process was opaque due to the nature of how e-voting machines work, Kitcat said. The majority of polling stations experienced technical problems, ranging from laptop problems to unreliable electronic registers, the report said. Employees of vendors whose equipment was deployed refused to interact with observers, Kitcat said. "No one would really say what was going on," Kitcat said. "It was all so mysterious." However, observers did identify potential security problems. The report includes photographs of PC workstations and hubs with open ports, a possible security risk. "Network hubs were left on the floor with power and network connections loose," the report said. "In one case in Edinburgh, a hub was observed in easy reach of attendees, with ports free lying beneath a table providing an opportunity for unauthorized access to the e-counting system's network." E-counting scanners proved finicky due to incorrect paper sizes, scanner sensitivity and trouble in handling low-quality perforations on ballots. The most curious error in e-counting occurred in a ward in Breckland, England, where voters were give two ballots: one each for district council and parish elections. Officials tried an electronic count, but came up with far fewer district ballots than parish ballots when the two counts should be roughly the same, Kitcat said. A manual recount turned up about 56 percent more district council ballots. "We haven't been given an explanation by the election official or suppliers," Kitcat said. In Scotland, observers noted that election officials could log into the e-counting software merely by scanning a bar code on their identification badges, which the Open Rights Group cited as another security concern. Some election officials were positive about using new election technologies, but "the lack of general technical understanding and knowledge about the e-counting and e-voting systems across election staff was perturbing," the report said. Â
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By JORDAN ROBERTSON  SAN JOSE, Calif. - Your work computer just suffered a major meltdown. Maybe the operating system failed, or a virus crashed the hard drive.
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And more cash for ICO A committee of MPs has dismissed government denials that recent data losses were the result of individual failures and called for legislation to punish such reckless treatment of private data in future.â¦
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Details on 11 million customers went awol The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined The Nationwide Building Society Â£980,000 for the loss of a laptop which contained "confidential customer data" on 11 million customers.â¦
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Data on 37 million Brits mislaid Last year was the worst ever for data losses in the UK, with almost 37 million people having their private data compromised.â¦