Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 November 2012
327. Deputy Thomas P. Broughan asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform when problems with the website www.etenders.gov.ie of the National Procurement Office will be ironed out; his views on the nature of those problems; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52704/12]
View answerThe upgrade to the eTenders website was launched on Monday 12 November. Even allowing for the trebling of the server capacity for the initial days following the launch, the volume of users accessing the system caused a delay in the server response times. Some incorrect server settings were also detected that day. These access and response issues were resolved that day and have not arisen since. Contrary to reports carried in the press, the upgraded system did not crash nor was it launched with any bugs in the system.
In relation to live tenders that transferred from the old system to the new system, over the weekend of 10 November, some data migration issues arose and were resolved within a few days.
Data migration issues from the previous operator to the new operator of the eTender website also created problems for Suppliers to receive alerts within their area of business about new tenders published from Monday 12 November.
The National Procurement Service has communicated with all Suppliers and public sector bodies registered on eTenders, advised of the solutions, apologised for the early problems and acknowledged the inconvenience arising.
Separately, users to the national portal informed the NPS of claims that they had received unsolicited marketing emails from the previous operator of the service, marketing a new service. This caused confusion among public sector buyers and suppliers.
The NPS is in discussions with the Office of the Data Protection Commission and is aware that the previous operator has issued an apology to users of the old eTenders website for using their contact details for this purpose.
