SMOKE DISABLES FEDERAL DATA CENTRE

Smoke inside a federal data centre Wednesday morning shut down email, some government websites and even the maligned Phoenix payroll system. The government’s central IT department, Shared Services Canada, says there was no fire in the Ottawa- area data centre — even though smoke was detected inside. The centre was evacuated and went into an emergency shutdown that hampered workers in many departments, including Transport Canada, where inspectors and special agents were unable to send or receive emails on their BlackBerry devices. Shared Services says about 50,000 public service workers had no email throughout the day. The Phoenix payroll system, already under scrutiny for problems that have affected pay for 80,000, was back up and running later. The department says it is working to restore all systems as soon as possible and liaising with other federal departments it serves to prioritize which systems and applications are brought online. It added it doesn’t know what caused the incident.