Posted on Monday, November 10, 2008 4:55 PM
A top secret IT centre will ensure pensioners and civil servants receive payments in the aftermath of a disaster or hurricane.
The location of the Government facility is so under-wraps, Minister of Energy, Telecommunications and E-Commerce Terry Lister could only disclose it was "a number of miles from Hamilton".
Mr. Lister said he could not reveal the location of the centre for "security reasons".
"We can't tell you that," he told The Royal Gazette. "Because Bermuda is so small, one would know exactly where they are.
"The whole point to it is if our systems went down from sabotage we would have another site where no one knew where it was."
The Minister did disclose the costs of the facility – $44,000, plus staffing costs.
The "high-security processing site" is built from concrete to withstand hurricanes, with a generator for power outages. It will be manned by staff from a Bermudian IT company, which Mr. Lister also refused to disclose the details of, for "security reasons".
The 'Disaster Recovery System' however, is now capable of processing transactions for the Accountant General and Department of Social Insurance after successful testing on November 1.
Mr. Lister said that during 2009, Disaster Recovery Plans will also be rolled out for other Government departments, with Customs and Immigration the next in line. He said priority would be given to "the biggest and most critical departments, in terms of interacting with the public".
"In the modern world of Information Communication Technology (ICT) factors such as security and disaster recovery are critical for an organisation's success," said the Minister.
"I know many large businesses in Bermuda take disaster recovery seriously and have world-class recovery plans including offsite redundancy centres from where they can run their business, providing seamless service to clients.
"In line with this initiative the Government Information Technology Office (ITO) has been working on and improving the Disaster Recovery Plan for two critical Government Departments - the Accountant General's office and Social Insurance. The work of these two Departments touches the lives of nearly every Bermuda resident, and most businesses, because these applications make accounts payable, payroll and pension payments."
Mr. Lister explained that the Disaster Recovery Plan rallies a 'real time' copy of all transactions on Government's production systems over to the Disaster Recovery System. The new IT system was an improvement, he said, because it no longer relied on "time consuming" tape copies, in which reading errors could also be made.
Mr. Lister said that in the event of a hurricane, such an offsite secure facility would "facilitate recovery efforts, allowing life to return to normal".
"I encourage businesses to follow Government's example and develop disaster recovery plans if they haven't already," he said.