Vital Highland Council meeting understood to be cancelled over major IT problems
Highland Council’s last full meeting of 2020 has been thrown into doubt after being struck by major IT problems.
In what is the latest in a series of serious problems with its online systems, the meeting that was due to start at 10am was put back to midday before being cancelled altogether.
If the IT provider Wipro – which has been mired in problems since it was awarded the contract – is able to resolve the issue then the meeting will proceed tomorrow at 9am.
However, according to council sources, if the company is unable to resolve the problem by then it is expected the meeting will not now take place until January 7 next year.
But some members fear that there may not be enough time to fully discuss the full agenda if it does go ahead tomorrow as a number of items have run over at meetings lately.
That would include vital issues such as the local authority’s bid to tackle burgeoning unemployment linked to Covid, as reported in Tuesday's Courier, and the latest capital budget.
It is understood that Wipro have offered an apology for the situation and are working intensively to discover what the exact issue is.
During the roll call this morning just 45 of 73 councillors were able to get online for the remote meeting with Wipro saying it was having technical problems with its Virtual Private Network (VPN).
A VPN is typically used to make it difficult to trace and therefore hack into a computer system.
Convener Bill Lobban said: "Well, since there are only 45 members able to log in to the meeting, the meeting is postponed until 12 noon.
"I would advise you to stay logged on if you can."
A council spokeswoman said: "Our Information and Communications Technology provider Wipro has apologised for our VPN connection issue this morning.
"They have a technical team working to resolve this as a priority. Meanwhile, the council meeting has been delayed until 12 noon."
The multi-million pound Wipro contract is due to be brought in-houses.
The local authority insisted this was based on economic grounds but it is understood significant under-performance played a major role in the decision.
