Question NW4066 to the Minister of Home Affairs

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17 November 2022 - NW4066

Profile picture: Roos, Mr AC

Roos, Mr AC to ask the Minister of Home Affairs

Regarding the Government Printing Works system crashes in February 2021, 31 January 2022, 25 Μarch 2022 and 11 April 2022 that caused complete audit data loss, (a) what are the reasons that on 31 January 2022, almost a year after the total data loss of February 2021, there was no backup in place, causing yet another complete audit data loss, (b) what is the total cost of data recovery to date as a result of the system crashes, (c) by what date will the data recovery project be completed and (d) what are the total estimated costs for the completion of the data recovery project?

Reply:

(a) No audit data/information was lost on the 31 January 2022. The system disruption that happened on this day was in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) environment, which does not have finance/audit information. GPW used the disk-backup to restore the affected systems in the DMZ environment.

(b) The following organisations were consulted to assist with data recovery:

  • Hewlett Packard (OEM)
  • CSSI data recovery specialists
  • State Security Agency (SSA)

GPW did not raise purchase orders for all the above organisations, therefore no costs were incurred.

(c) The Original Equipment Manufacturer (HP) communicated with GPW that the data which was lost as a result of EVA hardware crash cannot be recovered. There is currently no project underway to recover lost data.

(d) GPW will not incur any costs.

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