Good afternoon George

 

Thank you for your request asking for - Please provide the final incident
report for the signal failure event on 22 Feb 2024, and any similar
related documents involving analysis into the cause of the incident.

 

Please be advised we are declining your request under Section 6(c) to
maintain the security of KiwiRail’s systems.

 

We have assessed the information, weighed the release of the post incident
reviews against possible risk to the Organisation, and we are satisfied
that the need to withhold this information outweighs the public interest
in these matters.

 

We can however provide the below statement that was released to media at
the time of the failure which provided a bit of context on the outage.

 

At 9am this morning signals across Auckland went down for 13 minutes. All
trains were stopped immediately. All trains were moving again by about
9.45am, but the incident has resulted in affected services being delayed,
varying between 10 and 40 minutes.

Auckland One Rail is trying to manage train crewing shortages, and the
disruption today saw many of their crews displaced. I understand this has
resulted in a flow on effect reducing services during this afternoon’s
peak.

We have investigated the signals outage and found that an IT staff member
was doing a diagnostic on the fire wall that protects our Train Control
system, after a potential problem had been brought to our attention by
external specialists. The staff member was looking into it with the aim to
resolve any issue.

This type of work has to be done at night, when services aren’t running.
There are clear processes in place but these weren’t followed.

The fire wall went down and disrupted the signals system (the system lost
connection to its infrastructure in the field, then switched into Safe
Mode, stopping all trains as a safety precaution).

 

You have the right to seek an investigation and review of this response by
the Ombudsman, in accordance with section 28(3) of the Act. The relevant
details can be found on the Ombudsman’s website:
[1]www.ombudsman.parliament.nz

 

Kind regards

 

Dave

 

Dave Allard  | Senior Government Relations Advisor

DDI: 027 201 8182
Level 4, Wellington Railway Station, Bunny Street, Wellington 6011 | PO
Box 593, Wellington 6140, New Zealand

[2]Description: Description: cid:image001.png@01D46098.E77643D0

[3]www.kiwirail.co.nz

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: George Dewar <[4][FOI #26963 email]>

Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2024 8:37 PM

To: KiwiRail <[5][email address]>

Subject: Official Information request - Signal Failures on 22 Feb 2024

 

CAUTION EXTERNAL EMAIL: Do not click links or open attachments unless you
know the content is safe.

 

Dear KiwiRail,

 

Please provide the final incident report for the signal failure event on
22 Feb 2024, and any similar related documents involving analysis into the
cause of the incident.

 

Yours faithfully,

George Dewar

 

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