§ Miss Emma NicholsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how long each computerised system in his Department would take to return to full operation in the event of a disaster.
§ Miss WiddecombeThe Department has carried out a risk assessment for each of its computer systems and has adopted appropriate measures to minimise risks.
In the more important systems for administering social security benefits, high priority is given to business continuity. Computer capacity has deliberately been distributed round a number of linked computer processing centres and the communications network has been designed with sufficient flexibility and capacity to minimise the disruption caused by serious breakdown from whatever cause, and priorities have been established to reduce as far as possible the impact on the service to the public.
320Wrepresentative of the population at large. The tables use hypothetical rents, so they do not reflect the full range of housing costs which people can pay.
My hon. Friend may further wish to note that the tax/benefit model tables show the total net income on income support for each family type and this information has been included in the tables.
Timescales for recovery vary according to the cause of the disruption and the system involved for example whether it is a single office, a single system or a complete computer centre. Procedures and equipment have been developed to enable records to be reconstructed from archive material and to transfer workloads from operational computers to those used for non-operational work, such as systems for testing new developments and for maintenance.
These recovery procedures are tested regularly.