Suggestions for improving IT technology at the GRA

Dec 18, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
The recent downtime experienced at the Guyana Revenue Authority is unacceptable in many ways. There should be little to no downtime at the country’s most important revenue generating agency. This letter identifies many of the deficiencies in the agency and they need to be addressed as soon as possible.
The first point to note is that the people who are in charge of the IT infrastructure, senior management and other stakeholders must be held accountable. There are obviously no disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan in place at the agency and no hot sites for temporary continuity of the revenue generating activities. This is a very significant point to note as the value of such a downtime should be calculated in terms of financial loss to the country. The Guyana Revenue Authority should know the cost of losing an hour of business, much less a few days.
The dependency on a single system that has been in use for a number of years is another point of importance. The fact that the system failed the agency means that there is no continuous monitoring of the environment within which it functions. It also identifies poor inventory, log and patch management of the key information assets. This is a recipe for disaster as experienced by the agency. The system that has been the engine of the agency was developed by a foreigner business which does not support it anymore. Therefore, this means that it has passed its lifecycle and the agency should begin to identify other solutions.
At this point, the agency needs to bring all the key information technology personnel together and develop teams that will contribute to a robust business impact analysis of the agency. The team should consist of people who have worked at the agency and know the business process and other knowledgeable individuals on the topic. At this juncture, there should be rotation of IT staff so as to reduce and control the privilege on the systems, among many other activities too many to mention. This agency is one of the most important in the country and its leadership much all have a very patriotic sentiment towards its operation as it serves every Guyanese through its business processes.
The cause of the disaster, as prolonged downtime is considered a disaster, is very important to know; but that will help to prevent a recurrence. What is more important is the agency’s resilience to a disaster and that there are measures in place to accommodate the agency in the event that one does occur. This should be the agency’s focus at this point and it’s experience should serve as a use case for all other agencies as the government seeks to improve their e-government infrastructure.
Dustin Fraser

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