To ask the hon. Member for North Devon, representing the House of Commons Commission what progress the Commission has made in its review of the performance of parliamentary IT systems; and how many times House of Commons IT systems have been shut down in the last 12 months. (281773)

The recommendations made in the Administration Committee’s report on Information and Communication Technology Services for Members (HC 498) are mostly completed. This has resulted in improvements being made to services and a clarification of the services offered.

PICT’s major three year programme of infrastructure renewal began in April 2008 and remains on track. Renewal of the core services of e-mail and MS Office are due for completion by autumn 2009.

The parliamentary IT systems have experienced partial outages on 10 occasions in the last 12 months, two of which were for upgrades to security patches.