The failure of a new storage system rolled out last year is behind the Australian Taxation Office’s current tech problems, which have seen the agency’s website and online services rendered inaccessible.
In a statement, the ATO’s acting chief information officer, Steve Hamilton, said the agency was working with its external IT service provider, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), to resolve the problem.
“These outages relate to a new hardware storage solution that was upgraded in November 2015,” the acting CIO said.
“Our primary back-up systems, that should have kicked in immediately, were also affected. We understand this is the first time this problem has been encountered anywhere in the world and we are working with HPE to determine the underlying cause.
“While these investigations are ongoing, we have had to implement alternative recovery procedures that are taking longer to complete.”
“Specialist engineers have been working through the night with ATO staff to rectify the outages,” Hamilton said.
The ATO said earlier today that it had hoped to have a number of critical systems including the Tax Agent Portal restored by lunchtime today.
“At this stage, we are working towards critical systems such as the Tax Agent Portal and ATO.gov.au being available later today,” Hamilton said.