Since Friday 18 September, the University of Gothenburg has had major problems with its emails due to a server crash. In recent days, some emails are working again, but far from all.
"The fact that emails do not work for everyone is a very serious situation for our entire organisation and demonstrates the vulnerability of our digitised society. I can guarantee that we will do our utmost to fix this and I continue to hope for understanding from all concerned, both internally and externally. This incident needs to be thoroughly investigated and preparations for an in-depth audit are ongoing," says Vice-chancellor Eva Wiberg.
The cause of the crashed email servers is due to a previous undetected failure in the built-in software that in turn caused damage to the hardware. The IT unit has therefore engaged external specialists who are working to restore the damaged server environment.
"We are deeply concerned about possible loss of information. At present, we do not have a reliable forecast of what can be restored in the case of older emails. We can guarantee that we will do our very best to try and regain full functionality and recover information," says Eva Wiberg.
The first 24 hours after the crash, all employees were without emails, but reasonably quickly half of our users’ email accounts were retrieved. The restoration of emails for the remaining users is complicated.
"The reasons why it takes such a long time is due to the fact that employees at the University of Gothenburg use different types of computers that are updated and serviced in different ways. It is not currently possible to say exactly when all users will have e-mails again, but it is clear that on an ongoing basis, more and more will receive emails," says IT Manager Sören Ehrnberg.
The conditions for coping with the crisis of non-functioning emails have improved significantly since last year. Due to the pandemic, the university has been forced to change its working methods in order to cope with the transition to distanced education and temporary home working.
This has contributed to the fact that, to some extent, employees at the university have been able to maintain communication, especially internally.
"We understand that it is difficult for our external partners to know whether they reach us or not by email. This is a matter of regret and hope that they will seek alternative routes of contact. I would once again like to stress the seriousness of the situation and reiterate that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that these problems are resolved quickly," says Vice-chancellor Eva Wiberg.
As not everyone has access to their email, we recommend that you need to get in touch with the university to call instead.