Question Period in the House of Assembly was once again dominated by questions about the IT outage affecting the healthcare system.
Little in the way of new information about the nature of the attack was revealed.
Things began to heat up when the questioning moved to Digital Government and Service NL Minister Sarah Stoodley.
Opposition MHA Loyola O’Driscoll repeatedly asked about if any external audits of IT infrastructure have been completed under her watch, and when it was done.
Stoodley repeated that government has a robust system in place and that they are dealing with a “constantly changing landscape” and their teams try their best to keep up.
To that, O’Driscoll stated that “…from the response, there hasn’t been one done.”
The Opposition continued to grill Stoodley on the situation, including the matter of IT spending.
Her responses drew the ire of the Opposition’s Tony Wakeham,who questioned Deputy Premier Siobhan Coady.
He says Stoodley’s answers provide no confidence that she has control over the situation, which he calls “scary.”
In response, Siobhan Coady called the question “offensive” to Stoodley, who she contends has provided the requested information.
But, things heated up when Coady was cut off by comments from across the floor.
To the comments yelled from across the house, Coady stated that they are focused on restoring services and not on politics.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Derek Bennett declined a request by the Opposition for an emergency debate on the cyber attack affecting health care IT services – determining there is ample time within Question Period to debate the issue.