Government is undergoing a major IT upgrade to increase speed and access, according to Minister of Energy, Telecommunications and E-Commerce Terry Lister.

He told the House of Assembly that Project Phoenix would take full advantage of the information highway, while protecting Bermuda from any potential hazards.

Rapidly advancing technology and Government growth has been placing great strain on IT Systems, said Mr. Lister.

He added: "There are new services we want to incorporate such as instant messaging, on-line video conferencing and on-line document storage.

"Currently, the IT infrastructure is comprised of more than 2,000 devices, 300 servers and 110 networked buildings, making re-engineering of our systems vital to keep Government services timely, efficient and effective.

"To that end, we began Project Phoenix earlier this year."

He said Phoenix would modernise every area of IT by introducing more fault tolerance, capacity and capability.

"The bottom line is that our users will experience less down time, faster applications and access to newer technology as it emerges.

"These benefits will be achieved with a backdrop of comprehensive security and disaster recovery readiness."

Phoenix will be phased in over the next three years. It includes:

¦ Servers at the central data centre moving to dual locations along with two Internet connections.

¦ E-mail servers will be updated to support some of newer services and will have redundancy, reflecting their vital role.

¦ A state-of-the-art test lab will evaluate new releases of software and hardware before it is introduced.

Disaster recovery and business continuity is also being addressed.

Key Government buildings will be added to the new network and connected to the dual data centres by September 2010. Remaining locations will be hooked up by September 2011.

Mr. Lister added: "The focus of Project Phoenix is to provide Government unlimited potential to harness that creativity and productivity to offer our community the best possible service."