Concerns Raised About Ealing Council IT Outages
Opposition says key functions were offline 43 times over two years
Councillor Gary Malcolm accuses the Ealing Council of being complacent about the issue
March 13, 2024
The Liberal Democrat opposition on Ealing Council is raising concerns about the borough’s online operations after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request revealed the number of times they were off line.
It was discovered that over two years (2022 and 2023) the borough’s systems had 43 outages which were classified as ‘severe’, the highest level by which impact is measured.
In 2022 over half of the outages affected all or council wide services, with another quarter impacting customer services reducing the efficiency of delivery to residents.
The number of failures doubled in 2023 with the leading area for failures being IT Services followed by Customer Services.
Overall 14 service areas were affected including accommodation, children with additional needs, safeguarding, accounts receivable, resident and property services plus libraries.
Councillor Gary Malcolm, Leader of the Opposition Liberal Democrat said: “It is astonishing that Ealing Labour have been complacent and done little to address inefficiency and escalating IT issues which have directly impacted service users from children with special needs to safeguarding and accommodation.
"Most users across Ealing will have been impacted and prevented from engaging with the council or had a poor experience. This council has had at least two critical IT incidents a month for the last two years that is truly shocking. If Ealing Labour are failing on these basics what else are they failing at?”
The Liberal Democrats are calling on the council to publish an online FoI log to promote access to information, democratic engagement and accountability. Online FoI logs have been implemented in councils such as Harrow, Barnet, Bexley and Tower Hamlets.
We have asked the council for comment on the criticisms of the IT systems.
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