‘Nationwide’ server outage hits Shillong GPO
The hiccup is owing to the India Post migrating to the new IT Modernisation 2.0 framework
Shillong, Aug 5: Consumers at the Shillong General Post Office (GPO) had a harrowing second day on Tuesday owing to the server outage.
Several consumers, who came for services like speed post and parcel delivery, had to go back on Monday because the server was down.
“We cannot accept your parcel. Please come tomorrow (Tuesday). Hopefully, the server will be up and running,” an employee told this correspondent on Monday. When the correspondent went on Tuesday morning, the server was still down. A postal employee took the parcel and assured the correspondent that the receipt and bill amount would be sent on WhatsApp.
A Kadamba Singh, the senior post master at Shillong GPO, said the problem is national.
As part of its digitisation, India Post has shifted to the new IT Modernisation 2.0 framework. Under this digital initiative, all Administrative Offices, Post Offices and Railway Mail Service Offices of the Department of Posts will operate on the Advanced Postal Technology APT 2.0 portal.
Under IT Modernisation-2.0, Centre for Excellence in Postal Technology, Mysore, prepared the online portal APT 2.0, which provides a single window platform by combining the work of various software, which will make it easy for the postal staff to work and customers will also get prompt service, provided the glitches are overcome.
The plan was that approximately 165,000 post offices would have migrated to the new platform by August 4, which was Monday.
Shillong’s migration began on July 15. Since then, the GPO has faced server problems several times. Singh said, “It is a national problem and not Shillong-centric. We have migrated to a new platform, and the hiccups are natural in the process. We are coordinating with the Mysore team and cooperating with our consumers who are coming here in this rain.”
The IT team at Shillong GPO has four employees. The server could be restored for some time, but technical glitches occurred once again in the second half, according to official sources.
