DCC notified industry parties, including RECCo, on 06/07/23 that a major incident with the Central Switching Service (CSS) was impacting supply switch messages and new registration messages for gas and electricity supply customers. DCC has since updated CSS with the required information and sent the missing switch messages and new registration messages to market participants. This activity was completed by 08/08/23 in line with DCC’s planned timeframes.
DCC is now working to fully complete all aspects of their data reconciliation phase to allow them to formally close the incident on the planned closure date of 08/09/23. DCC is currently running a lessons-learned activity. RECCo encourages all market participants to engage with the questionnaire and feedback on DCC’s management of the various aspects of the incident ahead of the planned closure time of 18:00 08/09/23.
RECCo have also required DCC to conduct a post-incident review and deliver a report on its findings to the REC Performance Assurance Board (PAB), in line with the obligation set out in REC Schedule 26 (Switching Service Management), clause 2.16. The preliminary findings of the DCC review, including root cause analysis, were presented to PAB members on 05/09/23. They will give feedback on their observations and further questions to DCC. DCC is also scheduled to publish a wider post-incident report on 11/09/23, and RECCo will require assurances from DCC that all relevant market participants have received the report.
RECCo remains very aware of the frustrations felt by many market participants concerning this incident, including its duration and DCC’s approach to communication with the wider industry. We are working with DCC – and drawing on support from the Code Manager, our legal advisers, and impacted stakeholders – to deliver our own wide-ranging post-incident review for the REC Board, industry and Ofgem. RECCo has shared the initial scope of the review with Industry PAB members to ensure it will deliver the correct level of oversight across all aspects of the incident and that all the relevant lessons are learned to prevent a repeat of this incident.
Importantly, RECCo will ensure the review identifies the required changes and improvements to ensure the correct, robust framework is in place to assure industry market participants that the DCC’s CSS is given clear direction regarding its response to any future incidents. The RECCo review will also ensure that the appropriate actions and sanctions are allocated to the appropriate parties if performance levels are found to have been missed, or there have been breaches of the REC.
RECCo expects to present the preliminary findings of its review to the REC PAB in September and will share those findings with market participants as soon as possible.
See earlier updates here.
