A junior IT technician who was hired after RBS laid off more than 20,000 UK staff and outsourced their work to India was to blame for the bank’s massive computer failure last week, it is being claimed.
According to a source at tech website, The Register, the “inexperienced operative” who is understood to be part of an team set up in Hyderbad following the UK layoffs, was allegedly upgrading its mainframe batch processing software when he accidentally erased a load of data.
“An inexperienced person cleared the whole queue…they erased all the scheduling. That created a large backlog as all the wiped information had to be re-inputted to the system and reprocessed,” the source claimed.
Another source also told the Daily Mail that the problem was exacerbated because the botched update was applied to both of the bank’s back-up systems as well as the live computer, which is a worrying basic error.
The situation has meant that millions of payments, including employee wages, have disappeared from bank accounts, leaving customers unable to withdraw cash or settle bills.
But RBS’ chief executive, Stephen Hester, attested that there was no evidence to suggest the problem was connected to the outsourcing of IT jobs to India.
Asked directly about the issue by Sky News yesterday, he said: “Well, I have no evidence of that. The IT centre – our main centre – we’re standing outside here in Edinburgh, is nothing to do with overseas. Our UK backbone has seen substantial investment.”
Analysts have estimated that the fallout from the debacle could cost RBS about £100 million in compensation and overtime payments.
