Sask. provincial courts deal with ‘full-on nightmare’ computer system outage

Court was still in session in Saskatchewan on Friday morning, but things were a little more old fashioned than normal.

All court information had to be recorded manually while the computer system for the Saskatchewan court system was down province-wide.

The province has confirmed all systems were reportedly back up and running around 11 a.m.

Two court clerks 650 CKOM spoke with at Saskatoon Provincial Court confirmed the outage was happening on Friday morning.

The province has since confirmed in an email that the outage was caused because of “a technical issue with the Government of Saskatchewan Network.”

“The issue has been resolved and the network is now functioning,” said the email sent from the Integrated Justice Department communications branch.

Only provincial courts in Saskatchewan were affected. Higher courts in the province — Court of King’s Bench and the Court of Appeal — were not impacted.

One court clerk at Saskatoon Provincial Court called the outage a “full-on nightmare.” Court workers were catching up on work that was backlogged because of the outage.

According to the province’s email, “court operations did not report any negative impact on court processes.”

The outage meant fines and tickets could not be paid at courts while the system was down.

Dawn Blaus, a communication officer for the Courts of Saskatchewan, said the computer system used by the courts is supplied by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice.

— With files from 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff