By Andy McCue, 10 March 2005 11:55
NEWS London Underground is investigating the cause of a computer glitch that caused its Oyster smartcard ticketing system to crash during the peak rush hour this morning.
Ticket gates had to be left open when Oyster card readers at tube stations across the whole of London Underground and the Docklands Light Railway crashed at 4:00 a.m.
Transys, the EDS-led consortium behind the Oyster card system, said it had identified the problem by 8:30 a.m. and that most of the readers were working again by mid-morning.
A spokeswoman for Transys explained that information on lost and stolen Oyster cards that have been stopped overnight is sent to the card reader network at 4:00 a.m. every morning.
On this occasion the data appears to have caused the readers to crash and while the problem has now been fixed Transys is still investigating why it happened.
"We are now looking at what caused it so we can make sure it doesn't happen again," she said.
Oyster cards were introduced in 2003 with the £1.2bn PFI contract going to the EDS-led Transys consortium, which also includes Cubic Transportation Systems. The smartcards are manufactured by Giesecke & Devrient and SchlumbergerSema using MiFare chips from Philips Semiconductors.
Comments
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1. anonymous
MOD beware - this is the company that just won DII ...
2. anonymous
Well, at least I got to my stop for free yesterday... needed a top up, and couldn't get one. Well done EDS! Probably cost the Tube a couple of million, if not more, that day.
3. Roger Huffadine
EDS + PFI = nuff said
4. anonymous
EDS + PFI = £$£$£$£$
5. anonymous
Obviously 'Due Dilligence' no longer features as part of government IT contracts tendering or review processes anymore.
DVLA, Child Support, Benefits agency..
all recent EDS snarl up's, yet they still get load of business. MoD beware !!
Has all the good work about good IT Project Management and Governance the old UK Government CCITA (creators of Prince Methodology and IT Infrastructure Library ITIL Practices) been flushed down the bog by this Government ? All now part of the Office of Government Commerce - people repsonsible for the ignored Gateway IT review processes....
6. anonymous
Believe it or not there are hordes of people in EDS waving the 'ITIL' flag.
Personally, I don't consider the British Civil Service to be a paradigm of efficiency. I have no idea why we would use these processes