§ Mr. FabricantTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate he has made of the time it would take to get new computers running in the wake of a major computer disaster in his Department. [130970]
§ Dr. HowellsThe Department and our Agencies have a range of computer systems in use to support our day-to-day work. The responsibility for support of these is in the main outsourced to the private sector. For each of them disaster arrangements are in place to enable recovery of each system appropriate to the criticality of the business it supports. This includes the basic IT infrastructure on which each of these systems operates. The arrangements include built-in resilience, aimed at minimising loss of service generally. In the event of a major disaster impacting DTI's building, priority users have also been identified so that vital services can be restored first to these key personnel in the event of such a disaster.
The Department's disaster recovery programme covers appropriate testing of arrangements and any lessons learned are applied to strengthen the supporting processes and procedures.