Bengaluru: Internet outage hits work at Vidhana Soudha

Internet outage for several hours affected administrative work at Vidhana Soudha, Vikasa Soudha and MS Building - the secretariat - on Wednesday.

While authorities said that the outage was due to software upgrade work, officials and employees of various departments housed in corridors of power maintained that there was no prior intimation.

Movement of files was hit because of the internet outage since morning. Much of the file movement happs on e-Office, a paperless software system.

Due to the outage, some officials were seen struggling to clear important and priority files by connecting to the internet from their cellphones. "There were some important files related to court cases that had to be cleared. Left with no other option, we tried clearing files using our mobile data," one official said.

"If there was a scheduled software upgrade, it should have been communicated in advance to all department heads. But, we got to know about the outage when we entered our offices on Wednesday morning," a senior officer from the Department of Higher Education said.

Employees from various departments said that they were informed that the interruption was due to the software upgrade. "If that was the case why didn't they do it on Tuesday when offices were closed due to a government holiday declared on account of Muharram?" questioned one official.

At MS Building, internet was restored around 5 pm, when officers start wrapping up work.

When contacted, e-Governance secretary V Ponnuraj said that the internet was down due to the software upgrade and configuration. "Of the 1,300 units where upgradation was required, around 350-400 units were completed on Wednesday itself," he said. The upgrade process is done once every 2-3 years, Ponnuraj added.