The Board of Directors of the Department of Information Services (DIS) in cooperation with the Pasydy union decided to go on a spontaneous work stoppage on Friday due to a lack of staff.

According to a statement, the problems faced by staff are both long-standing and serious.

Specifically, the IT services department board of directors said in an announcement that they have now been informed that the government has proceeded with the secondment of 15 employees from the IT services department under the administration of the ministry of state for research, innovation and digital policy without consulting them and without replacing the people who are being seconded.

“New IT projects through the modernisation of the civil service have increased dramatically in recent years, strategies which as an organisation we fully agree with and support, but the number of staff has not only not increased but has decreased,” DIS said in a statement.

“As a result there are “teams” of one and two people responsible for systems of thousands of users and projects worth millions underway.”

DIS said this further undermines the work are trying to do because while there are still many ministries and services that lack primary support, posts have been effectively abolished.

It warned that there was a risk that digital transformation projects from the Recovery and Resilience Plan would not be implemented on time since the executive arm of most of these projects is the department of information services.