Scottish Government activates resilience operations after Microsoft outage

Detailed summary

The administration ‘remains operational and business continues’, Justice Secretary Neil Gray said.

The Scottish Government as activated its resilience operations as it seeks to assess the impact of a global Microsoft outage on services.

Justice Secretary Neil Gray said ministers were liaising with key partners – but stresses that the government “remains operational and business continues”.

He spoke out after councils and other public services were hit with technology problems that left millions without access to emails and Teams around the world.

The tech giant said it was working with “urgency ” to find a fix for the issue, which has caused widespread disruption since late Thursday, with governments, banks, police forces and health services among those hit.

Mr Gray said: “The Scottish Government’s resilience operation has been activated to assess the main impacts on Scotland of the global outage impacting some of Microsoft’s Cloud Services.”

He added: “We are liaising with partners across public services as they assess the impacts and continue providing key frontline services.

“While this is currently impacting some of the Scottish Government’s corporate systems, including access to emails, the Scottish Government remains operational and business continues.”

Councils and public services in Scotland are among those affected as a result of the ongoing global Microsoft outage.

The problem developed on Thursday evening and with Microsoft saying on Friday that it was “seeing early signs of stabilisation”.

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