Oro Governor Gary Juffa in today’s Parliament Sitting raised questions on the alleged hacking of the government’s financial system in October 2021.
He posed questions to the Minister for Finance & Planning, Rainbo Paita regarding the outcomes following the alleged hacking. He was informed by then Minister for Finance & Planning, John Pundari that the matter had been handed over to the National Intelligence Organization (NIO) to investigate.
Juffa said, “It’s been one year, some of us are still having these IFMS issues in our provinces and we would like to know, what has been done since the NIO has been tasked to investigate the alleged hacking of the IFMS system.
He added, “What measures have been put in place since then to ensure that this does not happen again.”
In response, Minister Paita said, “When that incident took place, the Cabinet took certain reactive measures to addressing the attack on the system that governs our financial system, especially within government.
“NEC gave certain direction to then Minister for Finance, to undertake findings as to what would be the cause of that malware attack on the IFMS system.
Paita explained that most provinces and districts use the IFMS system. Thus when the central agencies of government were affected by the malware attack, so were the districts and provinces.
He said, “We had to take measures which included us migrating some of our accounts from IFMS system to the COVID-19 accounts and other subsidiary accounts that we set-up so that we could create new ways for us to deal with that and at the same time, establish what was the cause.”
“Finance Department through the ICT Department, a division within Finance was tasked to establish the cause of this malware attack.
Paitai informed that he received preliminary findings from his department. However, is seeking a second opinion from experts on the report.
“I’ve asked my Secretary to get a more expert opinion on the report that is available at Finance and then we can have a more conclusive finding.”
Paita added that the department will be utilizing a specialized company to provide a second opinion which he will then present to Parliament, and also, the general public
The Minister said the report will be made available in the next four months.