The IT failures that crippled Sydney's rail network on Sunday, leaving thousands of frustrated Sydney-siders battling to reach their destination, were prompted by an unparalleled collapse in the rail network's computers.
The faults began to emerge immediately after a long-planned
software update commenced at 2am on Sunday, said Tony Braxton-Smith, the Deputy
Secretary, Customer Services, at Transport for New South Wales.
The upgrade could have been completed by 4am. But with issues occuring
during the update, Sydney Trains personnel made a decision to "roll back
the update" and leave the program as it was. However, after the roll-back
was completed at about 5am, the system was still exhibiting "intermittent
anomalies plus some performance issues", Mr Braxton-Smith said.
At 6am, those anomalies began to cascade. The systems affected
included the ones that locate trains on the network, the teach team and
rostering systems, and the ones providing information to passengers.
"Where it left us was with effectively soaring blind in its
key operational and management systems - finding where the trains are and managing
its staff," Mr Braxton-Smith said.
At that level, the top officials at Transport for New South
Wales where alerted to the problems - that they had received a priority One
alert, informing them that the IT system was down, on a day that could see
thousands of individuals going to an AFL derby and the Bledisloe Glass rugby
Test.
The failures have prompted apologies from Premier Gladys
Berejiklian and Transport Minister Andrew Constance, who nevertheless maintain
an insurance plan of not providing refunds for affected travellers.
And while transfer authorities are confident that the incident
would not repeat during the new week, they remain uncertain about the cause.
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