Skip to main content

New South Wales traffic management systems vulnerable, audit finds

The Audit Office of New South Wales (NSW) has found that although the Roads and Maritime Services and Transport for NSW has deployed many controls to protect traffic management systems, these would have been only partially effective in detecting and preventing incidents and unlikely to support a timely response. There was a potential for unauthorised access to sensitive information and systems that could have disrupted traffic. Until Roads and Maritime Services’ IT disaster recovery site is fully commiss
January 22, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
The Audit Office of New South Wales (NSW) has found that although the 6722 Roads and Maritime Services and Transport for NSW has deployed many controls to protect traffic management systems, these would have been only partially effective in detecting and preventing incidents and unlikely to support a timely response. There was a potential for unauthorised access to sensitive information and systems that could have disrupted traffic.

Until Roads and Maritime Services’ IT disaster recovery site is fully commissioned, a disaster involving the main data centre is likely to lead to higher congestion in the short-term as traffic controllers would be operating on a regional basis without the benefit of the Traffic Management Centre.

'Roads and Maritime Services worked well with the Audit Office throughout the audit and have already started acting on the recommendations made in the report,' said the Auditor-General Grant Hehir.

'Other government agencies with critical infrastructure should also seek to determine whether there are lessons from this audit that may apply to their organisations,' he added.

Related Content

  • Future traffic management needs new thinking, new technology
    January 23, 2012
    One of the biggest problems facing US ITS professionals, says Georgia DOT's Hugh Colton, is the constrained thinking which is sometimes forced upon those making procurement decisions. It is time, he says, to look again at how we do things. In the November/December 2010 edition of this journal, Pete Goldin interviewed Joseph Sussman, chairman of the US's ITS Program Advisory Committee. Amongst other observations that Sussman made was that, technologically, ITS in the US is 10 years behind that in the world-l
  • Centralised traffic control, managing changing traffic demands
    January 23, 2012
    Paul van Koningsbruggen and Dave Marples of Technolution BV describe, using a national example from the Netherlands, how smart add-ons to traffic control centres combine to increase cross-centre capabilities and cost-efficiency. Increasingly, traffic management is becoming the natural partner of the civil engineer, improving flows over existing infrastructure to deliver an alternative to laying more blacktop. As in any emerging market, the first steps towards mature traffic management have not necessarily r
  • Is driver information heading for multi-channel mayhem
    October 22, 2013
    Colin Sowman talks to TRL’s research director Dr Alan Stevens about the future for cash-strapped road authorities’ driver information systems.
  • New York's award-winning traffic control system
    February 28, 2013
    A comprehensive ITS strategy in New York built on a system of key building blocks has been crowned with an IRF award for the city’s Midtown in Motion adaptive control system. Jon Masters reviews New York’s ITS modernisation plan as the city looks to the next phase of expansion. In January this year the International Road Federation (IRF) presented TransCore and the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) with the IRF Global Road Achievement Award. This was for deployment of New York’s Midtown in