NT Police PROMIS computer system back online after crashing on Friday

THE computer system used by Northern Territory Police to access old records, arrest warrants, domestic violence alerts and criminal history checks has crashed

The PROMIS computer system NT Police use crashed on Friday night before being restored on Tuesday afternoon. PICTURE Supplied

THE computer system used by Northern Territory Police to access old records, arrest warrants, domestic violence alerts and criminal history checks has crashed.

The PROMIS system, used for the past 17 years, crashed about 10pm on Friday leaving police unable to insert any data to their system.

Assisting Deputy Commissioner Jamie Chalker said the outage did not significantly affect frontline police operations as backup offline systems and processes were in place.

“Technicians have been working around the clock to restore functionality,” he said.

“Normal police responsibilities continued.

“Some extra time will be required to bring the data up to date.”

He said the system was back online at 5pm yesterday afternoon and was operating normally by 6pm.

“The next stage of the recovery operations include the establishment of an administrative support task force to perform data entry of all information collected while the system was offline,” he said.

The goal was to now limit the amount of “catch-up” data that members will need to enter into PROMIS, allowing them to focus on present policing matters.

“It’s acknowledged that any unscheduled interruption to information systems is regrettable, however it is pleasing to note that the redundancy action put in place has been appropriate to ensure continuing operations of police,” he said.

Chief Minister Adam Giles said it was an old system which needed updating.

“It’s an ageing system and it’s a system that’s finding difficulties getting reliable resources to be able to service the system,” he said.

“Next year’s budget they will seek to replace it. We do have a long-term plan in replacing the whole system.”

Mr Giles said he guaranteed there would be money to fix it.

“We do need to fully replace the PROMIS system,” he said.

“It’s not in this year’s budget but I expect it to be in the budget’s going ahead.”