FOIPOP website still down as vendor contract nears expiration

Nova Scotia’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy website is still suspended after a breach was reported one month ago. Now government officials are staying tight-lipped about their relationship going forward with the company tasked with maintaining it among other online services.

READ MORE: Halifax police make arrest after Nova Scotia FOI website breached, personal information exposed

When the FOIPOP website was taken offline on April 5 it was expected to remain inaccessible for a matter of days. Now, officials say they’re unsure when access will be restored.

Internal Services Minister Patricia Arab said they continue to hold discussions on how to mitigate the challenges that have come due to the loss of the online service.

“It is a much more complicated process than originally planned,” said Arab.

Unisys, the company employed by the province to maintain the FOIPOP portal, is just weeks away from new contract talks.

The current deal ends in June and covers more than just the affected page.

“We have a number of contracts with them so we will be looking at all of our options and looking to see who the best vendor would be to work with,” explained Arab.

However, Premier Stephen McNeil admitted even with the recent challenges, switching to another vendor isn’t an ideal situation at this point.

“They do more than just that particular contract with us so we’re looking at all of that, some of which would require a fair bit of runway to change,” said McNeil. “There’s a lot of detail for someone else to bid into it or be part of that would require a bit of time.”

WATCH: Nova Scotia’s new FOIPOP website welcome but ‘systemic problems’ persist: critics

Opposition MLAs say a lack of information provided in the month since the portal was shut down doesn’t bode well for the present situation.

“I just hope when the contract is developed that the government is a lot more straight forward and forthcoming about the reasoning behind what they’ve done with the contract than they’ve been on this issue,” said NDP Leader Gary Burrill.

“We need more information, we need to know what happened and where the failure was,” said PC MLA for Pictou East Tim Houston. “Somebody has to be accountable. If that’s somebody in the government, then it’s somebody in the government. If it’s somebody in the company, then it’s somebody there, but we just don’t have enough information because nobody’s willing to be frank about what happened.”

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