By Charles McLellan, 28 April 2006 08:15
NEWS
A multimillion pound IT system that computerised the UK's MOT testing programme suffered technical problems this week. The cause of the incident isn't yet known but it left some garage owners virtually unable to work.
Siemens Business Services (SBS) built the system for the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa) at a total cost, over 10 years, of £230m. The rollout, across all 18,500 UK authorised testing stations, was completed at the end of March this year.
The system links local garages directly to a central database, where information about vehicles, test results and authorised testers is stored. It is meant to combat the sale of fraudulent MOT certificates.
Vosa confirmed on Thursday that the computerised MOT system had been disrupted.
A Vosa spokeswoman confirmed some garages hadn't been able to use the Siemens-built system as normal but wasn't able to reveal further details. She added that Vosa had introduced an emergency testing procedure, where car owners were issued with hand-written certificates.
Workers at one garage told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK on Thursday afternoon that the problems had started on Tuesday but the system was now working as normal.
One employee said: "This is the first time that the system has gone wrong in six months. We were hardly able to work at all."
Another garage worker said that when he complained to Vosa, he was advised to "send a letter to Siemens - it might help".
Siemens Business Services had not responded to requests for comment at the time of writing.
Vosa awarded the private finance initiative contract to Siemens Business Services back in 2000, with the aim of rolling out the system to garages from May 2002. However, faults discovered during extensive testing led to repeated delays.
Alex Fiddes, director of the private vehicles sector at Vosa, told silicon.com earlier this month: "This is not a simple IT system and we said we would not rush to meet artificially imposed milestones."
Charles McLellan and Graeme Wearden write for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Graham Coles
Now we know what's in store for people with the even bigger ID card system.
'I'm sorry, we can't fill your prescription because we require an ID card, and the system has gone down …'
Will the government EVER learn?
2. Jeremy Wickins
Graham Coles is quite right - this is a precursor of the chaos and upset that we will all face each time we use the morally corrupt ID cards: "sorry, you can't have your operation/benefits/mortgage/legal advice/new car/access to you bank account - the system is down". Or worse: Policeman to ordinary citizen, "Sorry sir/madam - the ID card system is down, so we can't verify your right to be here. You will have to come down to the station until it is. By the way, you don't mind giving us a DNA sample at the same time, do you?"
Scared yet?
3. Stuart Bailey
Today I have attempted to have my vehicle MOT'd. Due to poor software it took 2 hours.
The database does not list Ferrari's manufactured prior to 1975
It does find my vehicle registration but brings it up manufactured 2 years earlier than it is, it will not accept chassis numbers of less than 6 digits, most Ferraris are 4 or 5.
The whole system is a fiasco, data entry is just about the worst I have ever seen, telephone support is poor.