News
21st December, 2020
CAD outages at ESTA
As members will be aware, there have been significant issues with the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA) Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) following an essential upgrade on 25 November 2020.
This culminated in a statewide CAD outage on Thursday 17 December 2020 where all dispatchers and call-takers had to change to manual dispatching.
On 18 December 2020, the Victorian Ambulance Union Incorporated (VAU), the Communications Workers Union (CWU) and the United Firefighters Union (UFU) (Unions) met with ESTA management to discuss the outage. In this meeting, ESTA stated that the crash was a result of a ‘memory leakage’ and that the issue had been resolved.
However, the Unions remain concerned that CAD could crash again.
Although ESTA state that they have resolved the issue for now, we have not been provided with any evidence that the underlying issue has most likely been resolved. For this reason, the VAU remains concerned that a CAD outage could occur again.
The outage on 17 December 2020 occurred after a thunderstorm asthma warning had been issued and could have led to a disastrous outcome if not for the tremendous skill of our members who work in the communications centres.
Discussions with Government
This week the VAU have raised concerns directly with the Emergency Services Minister’s Office and sought an explanation of what occurred on 17 December as well as an assurance that it will not happen again.
As this is still a live concern, we ask that if members experience any issues with CAD to email the VAU at [email protected] with the subject “CAD and ESTA”.