Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 226: To ask the Minister for Transport the steps that have been taken by his Department to upgrade the DTS administration system; the specific new systems that have been provided and the cost; the server-end hardware which is in use; the year in which this hardware was purchased; the warranty status of this hardware; the annual maintenance cost of same; if there continues to be capacity problems with this system; if the software and application software has been updated in the past year; if not, if they are supported for updates; if the DTS administration system is integrated with other administrative applications in use in Ballina; if the DTS administration system is widely accessible outside of Ballina; the maximum number of driver tests that can be processed through the system in one calendar year without causing system failure; the stress testing undertaken on the system and the maximum stress loads tested; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18846/06]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 227: To ask the Minister for Transport the name of the software currently in use by the driver testing service in Ballina; the version of this software being used; the name of the software producer; the support contacts which are in place with the software producer; when same will expire; the number of information technology staff who have received specific training to enable them to support this software; the cost of this training; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18847/06]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 226 and 227 together.

My Department successfully completed an upgrade of the server hardware and database software for the Driving Test Scheduling Application in 2005. A number of small enhancements to the application itself were also made. System administration training on the system was also provided to three IT staff based in Ballina. The total cost of the upgrade, enhancements and training was €166,000.

The project resulted in improvements in the capacity, speed and reliability of the system. A full testing programme was carried out, including appropriate stress testing. This confirmed that the system is capable of meeting the immediate requirements of driving test administration. However, the basic code on which the system relies is over 10 years old and this brings with it associated inflexibilities and inability to respond to modern requirements. Nevertheless, it is now sufficiently robust to allow an 18 to 24 month window of opportunity during which it is intended to significantly improve the overall system and to link it to internet based public access.

The scheduling application now runs on a Dell PowerEdge 2850 server with fail-over to a second Dell PowerEdge 2850. Both servers were purchased in May 2005 with Microsoft Windows server 2003 operating system. Both are covered by a three year warranty which expires in June 2008. The cost of the warranties was included in the total server purchase cost of €17,814.

The application software was migrated to Ingres 2.6 which was the latest stable version of the database management system available at the time of the upgrade. There is a further upgrade path to Ingres 2006 in the current support agreement. The software provider is Ingres Corporation and the support licenses were purchased from their partner company, Rational Commerce Ltd at an annual cost of €7,816. There is also an additional system, database and application fault response contract in place at a cost of approximately €20,000 per annum. This expires on 31 August 2006. The scheduling application is not specifically integrated into other applications used in Ballina but is available on all desktop computers of the staff in the area. There is a capability to extend access to the scheduling application from external sites should business needs and priorities require this.