The Gauteng Shared Service Centre (GSSC) is still investigating why its system suffered a major crash at the beginning of August.
Yesterday, GSSC media liaison Emmanuel Mdawu said the technical clean-up process was complete, but the centre could not yet comment on the cause of the shutdown. A forensic investigation into the matter is ongoing.
Preliminary findings indicated a virus, downloaded from the Internet, led to the majority of the GSSC's users across the province not being able to log into the system.
Last week, it came to light that the GSSC's IT system crashed for two weeks at the beginning of the month.
The downtime contributed to the already significant backlog in driver licence bookings that the centre had to deal with. It also jeopardised its ability to pay provincial staff members' salaries.
Mdawu does not yet know when the investigation into the matter will be concluded.
"The CEO will issue a statement as soon as this [the investigation] is finalised. Through the [incident] report, he will also be in a position to determine the next course of action."
Rebuilding IT
Security solutions vendor Symantec has, in the meantime, been brought in to assist the GSSC with its recovery process.
The GSSC said last week it had to rebuild its entire IT environment following the crash.
Graig Rosewarne, chairman of the Information Security Group of Africa, says while it is not "unheard of" for a company to be affected for long periods of time by a systems crash, a virus should not lead to the IT infrastructure being down for weeks.
"You should be able to rebuild those computers and reload the last clean image on the system," says Rosewarne. "You don't start from the foundations and rebuild a house."
Sharing experiences
Meanwhile, the GSSC will host the first Shared Services in the Public Sector Africa Conference this week, at the Sandton Convention Centre.
The conference is expected to attract about 300 delegates and will be addressed by deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Nqcuka, as well as Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa. Mlambo-Nqcuka will address delegates on Wednesday morning.
Topics on the agenda include continued improvement within the shared services environment and linking customer relationship management goals to shared services.
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