§ Mr. BennettTo ask the Chairman of the Information Committee what assessment he has made of the reliability of the Parliamentary Data and Video Network. [679]
§ Mr. WallerThe Parliamentary Data and Video Network provides a data network which is operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It has been running continuously since November 1993, although it has grown considerably during that time. For the two years from November 1993 to October 1995 inclusive, downtime for the network has been calculated as follows:
Hours Percentage PDVN unscheduled downtime 101.65 0.58 PDVN scheduled downtime 316.25 1.80 Downtime attributable to PWD/works 1,056.00 6.03 Total 1,473.90 8.41 PDVN scheduled downtime and PWD works downtime have almost all occurred over weekends or on other non-sitting days.
On the afternoon of 16 November, a serious fault occurred on the network which resulted in intermittent problems for all users of the PDVN. The cause of the fault has now been located and the E-mail address corruption which occurred as a result of the fault is being remedied. A full investigation is under way into the cause in order to prevent a similar occurrence.