back to article DWP admits multiple fraud system failures

A Department for Work and Pensions minister has disclosed that the department's Fraims system has experienced numerous instances of disruption since January. According to a parliamentary written answer published on 7 April 2010, the DWP has logged over nine hours of disruptions to the Fraud Referral and Intervention Management …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Natty
    Happy

    Just another day in the ghetto for me

    Maybe it had a problem processing so many names with MP at the end of them...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Obvious

    Well of course HP have 'issues' supporting their UK customers - something to do with firing most of the folks that do/did the work! And they obvioulsy didn't learn anything from that earlier mainframe failure because the idiots are STILL firing the techies.

    ("Fail" icon because that goes with Mark Turd like peanut butter goes with jelly).

    Expect to see more "failures" as HP continue to "encourage" folks to "pursue other career opportunities"

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    The system was developed by IBM

    HP host and maintain it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      you mean "HP are paid to host and maintain it"

      and they do at least host it...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    still, it's nice to see HP get some coverage

    in my day everyone was complaining about EDS, the Windscale of IT outsourcing.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    99.375% uptime on initial roleout!

    Given it was “over nine hours of disruptions to the Fraud Referral and Intervention Management System (Fraims) from January to March.” We can safely infer that this constituted two whole months at least; So that is 9 hours in 2 months and we shall for ease call that 60 days or 1440 hours. So 9 hours out of that period would be (100/1440)*9 giving us 0.625%. Therefore, that is a 99.375% uptime for the management types out there. If we take into account that is a new system, which we all know will have a higher rate of teething problems than a current system. Well, that is not only right but also in many respects good given the size of system and as such the code and other underlying components. Now over the year I’d say the odds of hitting 5 9’s and more are still not only looking good but show allot of promise if apply some common IT since and factor in they don’t panic and suddenly use Muppets to fix problems.

    I’m probably being pragmatic from experience of working in IT and knowing how things pan out, but there again I’m probably one of the few who’s reading this and thinking, IT could of been allot worse and is actually pretty respectable all things taken into account and that being it’s a new system.

    So only real complaint is as usualy cost and delays in initial release, I blame the lawyers not respecting IT peers enough and not drafting up a good contract with nice penalty clauses to cover the accountant unforseen but IT peers obvious mistakes. But lawyers/accountants get paid more than IT people in many respects. Price of still being in a new industry me thinks.

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    Keep on running

    Apparently not.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    How do you measure an outage? Many ways to skin a tiger...

    Out of professional interest, anyone know:

    1. Were these "disruptions" full system down for all users or only affected certain users in certain locations?

    2. Is it "Central-site" availability that is being measured? Normally the Comms takes a moment or two extra to stabilise after an unplanned outage.

    3. Or was it just critical functionality that was lost?

    As an Airline systems programmer, we have a zero-outage target.

    For the customers, it's something like 99.99% uptime.

    When we need an outage, we rebalance all Comms and Users onto a different CPU for the duration. Nobody notices a thing. Normally!

    Mind, we're talking 40+ years of expensive "Legacy" (horrible word!) development to build system tools like that.

    If we do crash ALL CPUs, then nothing gets airbourne. Nothing.

    (Aside: That's because there's nobody left at the Airport who knows how to do a Manual Aircraft Loadsheet, but that's another story: cost-cutting, training, outsourcing "core" functions bla bla...so do think of this post if you're stuck in a Queue at check-in one day because "the computeres have gone down"...)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ PXG - Allot ?

    Your use of the word "allot" twice in your submission makes no sense. Allot is an abbreviation of "allocate". In the context of your writings, you should have used "a lot".

    Allot means "to distribute between or among", or "to allocate"

    Example: "The company allotted (or allocated) a parking space for each employee".

    A lot (two words) is a phrase meaning "many."

    Example: "There are a lot of people unemployed in the UK".

    Back on topic, the DWP, in common with many other government departments, seem to have far too many computer system problems. Perhaps they should go back to using pen and paper, and sell the computer systems to pay off some of the national debt!

This topic is closed for new posts.