Question NW538 to the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development
19 September 2024 - NW538
Breytenbach, Adv G to ask the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development
Whether any technical issues have been experienced with the evidence database of the Zondo Commission that is in the custody of her department, which have caused problems with anyone accessing the database; if not, what is the position in this regard; if so, what (a) measures has she been taken to (i) maintain the database and (ii) fix access to the database and (b) are the further relevant details?
Reply:
(a)(i) and (ii)
The warranty on the Digital Forensic Technology (DFT) was for 36 months only when it was designed.
The maintenance engineer, procured originally by National Treasury for the Commission and now transferred to the DoJ with the DFT, states that:
“Maintenance and Support on all hardware was procured for 36 months. An extension of a further 1year was procured for the storage devices on which the critical data resides. Due to consistent power outages these devices were affected.
Plan of Action: Reinstatement of OEM maintenance and support will allow us to work with OEM (NetApp) to secure required spare parts and ultimately be able to upgrade the system to latest supported software and hardware versions ensuring consistent accessibility of data.”
(b)
The issue of access to the rest of the Data Centre, where data resides in other servers and storage platforms remains fully operational. All relevant licenses have been updated. The residual mechanism, now residing in the Department, remains committed to assisting the ID and other law enforcement agencies with requests for information and training to enable them access to the platforms themselves.