Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 27 February 2014
116. Deputy Stephen S. Donnelly asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the way the Government missed the 8 April 2014 deadline for upgrading IT systems from Windows XP, in view of the fact that the end of mainstream support was 14 April 2009; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10135/14]
View answerThe deadline referred to in this question relates to the expiration of support for some Microsoft software systems, including Windows XP, in use across a number of Government agencies. Responsibility for the delivery of their computing services rests with each organisation. With regard to the product suite in question organisations have the option of upgrading to a more modern version or finding alternative solutions. Many have already done so including my own Department, the Department of Finance; the Department of the Environment Community and Local Government, the Department of Education and Skills, and the Department of Social Protection.
An agreement has been reached between Microsoft and the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer to allow Government Departments and their agencies to avail of extended support for a range of products that will not be included in the standard Microsoft support arrangements from April 8th2014. As a result they will continue to receive necessary security patching and bug fixes to help maintain the reliability of the systems that they have deployed and to reduce the risk of these systems being hacked. A cap of €3.3 million on the total cost of such support arrangements for agencies availing of the MOU has been agreed.
The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer engaged with other public bodies and Microsoft regarding the implications of running unsupported software. The discussions focussed on the remedial measures that could be put in place and in identifying those organisations which wished to be included in an extended support arrangement.
It is up to each agency to avail of the support available under the terms of the MOU. The MOU provides them with a one-year window of opportunity for migrating their applications and hardware to a more modern and supported operating system. Any agency availing of this agreement must develop a plan to migrate from the affected products before the expiration of the agreement in order to ensure they will no longer be at risk. There will be no additional vote allocation or central fund created to meet this cost, it must be met by individual agencies from their existing budgets. Only the agency involved would be able to provide details on why they have failed to upgrade in advance of the April deadline.
