General Election 2015: Two-Fifths Of London Boroughs ‘Unprepared’ For Election IT Disaster

Days before the 2015 General Election, 40 percent of London Borough Councils haven’t tested their disaster recovery procedures over the past 12 months, according to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

Disaster recovery provider Databarracks sent FOI requests to all 32 London Boroughs, of which three did not respond and two refused to answer, claiming the information fell outside the FOI requirements and belonged to the Electoral Register Office.

All who responded confirmed they did have thorough backup and disaster recovery procedures in place but not all could be confident that these plans would work on Election Day, according to Databarracks managing director Peter Grocutt.

Election disaster recovery

“We always recommend performing a DR test at least once a year,” he said. “At any time in the year councils are under scrutiny to keep sensitive data secure and systems running smoothly. So the run-up to a general election, when the electoral roll is most important, it is vital to ensure your procedures are water-tight.”

Grocutt added there were further concerns about each council’s Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), the targeted amount of time for a process to be restored, and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), the maximum period in which data might be lost due to a major incident.

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“Most of the councils that did respond to us told us that their Recovery Time Objective for electoral data was 24 hours, with some even as long as 7 days or in one case up to 2 weeks,” he added. “It was also interesting to see that different councils have very different classifications for how critical the electoral register is.

“For some it is a ‘Priority 1’ system and requires the fastest recovery possible but for others there is no prioritisation, and for some the register is not included on their continuity list or would only be recovered on a ‘best-effort basis’.

“With just a couple of days before the election, realistically there isn’t time to test systems now. For government bodies dealing with such vast amounts of sensitive data, it really is paramount to ensure they’re ready in future. All of the boroughs we spoke to have good backup and disaster recovery policies in place, but now it’s time to put them to the test and make sure they really work.”

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