Question

To ask the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, representing the House of Commons Commission, what assessment the Commission has made of the reasons for the frequency of recent interruptions to online services on the Parliamentary estate.

The recent interruption to network services was caused by a problem with the way Parliament-issued devices, such as laptops, connect to our network; this prevented users from accessing the corporate wi-fi network. During this period, users were advised of alternative ways to access services, by connecting to our Wi-Fi Connect service.

The issue has now been resolved and there should be no further impact to users but, as a precaution, wherever possible future work in this area will be scheduled to coincide with recess periods. A representative from the PDS Members’ Services Team is happy to meet with the Member to discuss this and any other issues arising from the outage.

The Digital Service manages all technical issues with the potential to have significant impact to Parliament through a dedicated “Major Incident” process. This is mobilised to help both triage and resolve the technical issue and also to manage the impact, including keeping users informed and implementing any workarounds to minimise disruption.