NSW ambulance computers coming back online
- 14 February, 2011 10:49
- Comments 3
Computers which co-ordinate NSW's ambulances are back online in three of the state's regions after a major virus forced staff to shut them down for more than 24 hours.
The virus crept into the Ambulance Service of NSW's dispatch system at 1pm (AEDT) on Saturday, prompting staff to co-ordinate paramedics by telephone and handwritten notes.
Despite the shutdown, senior managers say no lives were put in danger and all triple-zero calls were answered.
By Monday morning, computers in three of four ambulance control centres were back online - in Sydney, and the state's north and west.
The state's south was expected to be back online later in the morning, a statement from the ambulance service said.
Its general manager Mike Willis said the time it took to fix the problem was "regrettable".
"It has been a long time coming back online," he told Fairfax Radio Network on Monday morning.
"That's regrettable. But I'll say we wouldn't allow the system to be turned back on until our technicians cleaned every workstation."
The cause and source of the virus was still not known, he said.
An investigation is underway, now that the technicians could switch their attention from solving the pressing online problems.
NSW Health Minister Carmel Tebbutt on Sunday said an inquiry would begin once the whole system was back online.
The state opposition called the shutdown a "complete failure" of the computer system, saying it could have cost lives.
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Comments
peterniss22
Protip: Drop your windows based systems and move to an intranet based system that runs from a read only vmware image. Whoever is in charge of IT delivery for NSW Ambulance service needs to be sacked. Just because Microsoft essentialy bribe those who make the IT decisions doesnt mean those people have to give in and accept an OS that leads the world in infectability when so many proven platforms exist. If your emergency services can be taken out by an infected email or driveby download, your doing it wrong.
stephen.michael.kuhn
The RTA uses iMac systems for their front-ends. Out of how many infrastructure departments in the NSW system does someone use something other than Microsoft based OS's and systems?
I personally know that the entire NSW education system is rife with viruses and God-knows-what-else; I have migrated several senior teachers to linux because they just cannot get their job done using the system configuration they were given in the first place.
In the past ten years, other options have been thrown at the IT decision makers in our State government, and basically the same excuse has been chucked back - basically stating that there is no support for non-Microsoft platforms, and it would cost too much - yadda yadda yadda. We already saw that the launch of the education departments "brain child" website went critical the day it was launched; who exactly in our state and country's government is in bed with Microsoft? And why is our personal and private data being trusted to an insecure infrastructure? Why are critical systems being trusted to insecure software? Why are OUR tax dollars being spent on something that really has no return on investment?
And oddly enough, why is the RTA using Macs and the rest of the other government departments using MS Windows based machines? Go figure that one out.
Dave A,
Why anyone would use Windows in mission critical systems is beyond me. We use Linux for our mission critical mfg system, though, since the software is written in java, is does run on a some Windows boxes. We have one guy full time who spends most of his time managing the windows boxes and their many problems. The linux boxes just continue to run without issues, some of which have been in service since 2003 without even an OS upgrade.
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