Sprawling systems teeter on IT chaos

[CVX]

The UK government is spearheading a £10 million programme aimed at finding ways to avert catastrophic failures in large IT networks.

Some systems are now so large they are untestable, making it impossible to predict how they will behave under all circumstances. The hidden flaws could lead to crashes in critical networks like healthcare or banking systems.

The scheme has been given added urgency by the failures of power grids in the US and Italy last year. “The system failures in terms of electricity blackouts show that patterns of unexpected and negative behaviours can arise, and when they do they are often disastrous,” says the government’s chief scientist, David King. If a century-old technology like a power grid can fail, the same might easily happen to modern IT networks.

Cancelled government IT projects plus others that have run over budget – such as tax and child benefit computer systems – cost the UK £1.5 billion over six years, according to a 2003 report from the Office of Government Commerce.

Now all government departments, health services and education systems across the 25 countries of the European Union are being linked to the internet. And the UK government ultimately wants many departmental IT systems connected together in the name of “joined-up government”.

But there is a real danger that such massive interconnected systems will exhibit potentially disastrous “emergent behaviours”, says David Cliff of Hewlett-Packard’s laboratory in Bristol, UK, who along with Seth Bullock at the University of Leeds wrote the report that prompted the government to address the issue.

More: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996706

[Bill Sikes]

CVX wrote: The UK government is spearheading a £10 million programme aimed at finding ways to avert catastrophic failures in large IT networks.


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