back to article Blighty's 24-hr Universal Credit outage caused by upgrade glitch

Gremlins that showed up during a planned upgrade to the UK Department of Work and Pensions’ systems brought down online services for more than 24 hours, sources have told The Register. Techies at the services-based reseller SCC, which has a hosting contract with the DWP, began the work yesterday but some unspecified …

  1. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Coat

    so ....

    were both recipients affected ?

    1. Rono666

      Re: so ....

      I think the dog was ok with it...

    2. Novex

      Re: so ....

      Both? According to the text of last paragraph of the article...

      We are aware that our customer experienced an inability to access business applications.

      ...there's only one (and it's not me).

      * and yes, I know that 'customer' really refers to the singular 'DWP', not the users of the facility.

  2. Chad H.

    But universal credit IS a technical glitch...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Again?

    The problem with universal credit is universal credit, not to mention it being an IDS pet project. When will they get the hint, and drop it.

    PS As of feb this year 364,000 people had made a claim, statXplorer is down today so we have to believe wikipedia. Implementation costs to date? Billions and the costs keep rising. Is that really value for money, or merely welfare payments to the rich contractors with their snouts in the public trough.

    Adam Smith is spinning in his grave

  4. Peter Prof Fox

    Alpha!

    Yet again the [fill-in-term-of-contempt] at gov.uk /release/ an alpha. Their grasp of basics on this matter is so good I hate to think what the quality of the rest of their work is like...

    ...Oh yes we know.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    UK Gov making improvements?

    Yeah. Right.

  6. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Oh for crying out loud

    Why don't they show some compassion and just shoot it?

    1. Iain Griffiths

      Re: Oh for crying out loud

      Because it was assessed by ATOS and scored no points. It was fit for work.

  7. armyknife

    Maybe they should sanction the developers, say an initial 13 weeks wages for this first failure.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dole

    As a recipient of universal credit, I have asked cheekily if they have any IT jobs going, such is my wit.

    They've gotten rid of the service desk they call. I curried favour last week by helping my advisor with his popups in IE. Frequently they can't print or access network shares.

    No surprise to learn behind the scenes it's mismanaged.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Which version

    Which Universal credit, Live which is an antiquated political fig leaf effectively only running Job seekers allowance or the GDS look alike digital service that has a limited roll out?

  10. Aging Hippy
    Childcatcher

    Engineers tried to roll back the upgrade but it proved too complicated

    Translation: They didn't back everything up before they started. They didn't include rollback in the trial conversion - if they did a trial conversion.

    Implication (from experience): Routine backups aren't good enough to guarantee recovery from some corruptions during live running.

    I'm sure they can type all the data in again.

    1. BongoJoe

      Re: Engineers tried to roll back the upgrade but it proved too complicated

      ...and squeeze in a pay rise here or there for their mates working at some of these clouded companies.

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