Government admits no IE6 upgrade until 2011

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 15 Jul 2009 at 16:18

A tenacious MP has discovered that many Government departments are still running Internet Explorer 6 and have no plans to upgrade.

Tom Watson MP has been asking the major Government departments when they plan to upgrade from Internet Explorer 6 and has recieved some alarming answers.

The Department of Children, Families and Schools claims it has no plans to move from IE6 until at least 2010/11, leaving the entire department in the hands of an obsolete browser.

It's a similar story with the Ministry of Defence which points to the implementation of a new secure network as the reason why it doesn't have any plans to upgrade its browsers.

However, even these answers are step up from the Department of Health, which has no plans to upgrade and says it doesn't even know what browser it would upgrade to.

Despite this, there are a few bright spots. the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office claim to be in the process of upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 - with work expected to be complete by the end of this year.

A number of reasons have been offered as to why significant Government departments are reluctant to switch to securer browsers, with contracts with technology vendors often cited.

"As part of its long term Private finance initiative (PFI) Agreement with Fujitsu, the Department is currently reviewing its options for the technology refresh of software such as Internet Explorer 6," notes the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills in its response.

The Northern Ireland office blames a lack of compatibility with existing systems: "The Northern Ireland Office uses Internet Explorer 7. However, in a number of areas some large corporate applications are at this stage still only supported for delivery using Internet Explorer 6, so there are no plans for a complete update before 2010."