ASX Trade's outage in November 2020 was caused by the release of a software update which was not ready to go live, an independent review has found.
ASX Trade's outage in November 2020 was caused by the release of a software update which was not ready to go live, an independent review has found.
On November 16, 2020, an outage occurred shortly after a major upgrade to the ASX’s equity trading platform, ASX Trade, just after the market opened.
It required the ASX to close the market for the rest of the trading day.
The review, commissioned by the ASX and completed by IBM, found overall, the ASX met or exceeded leading industry practices in 58 out of 75 capabilities assessed.
However, it identified the outage occurred because the ASX Trade system was not ready to go live; there were gaps in the rigour applied to the project delivery risk and issue management process; and it was not reasonable to expect the test plan used would meet the ASX’s near zero appetite for service disruption.
The ASX has agreed to address the recommendations in the review and apologised for the disruption to the market.
Australian Securities and Investments Commission chair Joe Longo said IBM found the ASX met or exceeded leading industry practices in most areas but the conclusion that the project was not ready to go live was very disappointing.
“ASX has acknowledged and accepted the need for improvement,” Mr Longo said.
“We do, however, require assurance that these improvements are implemented effectively and result in an overall improvement to ASX’s enterprise-wide project management practices.”
ASX managing director Dominic Stevens said the market outage fell short of the ASX’s high standards.
“We believed that the software was ready for go-live, as did our technology provider Nasdaq,” Mr Stevens said.
“Clearly there were issues which was particularly disappointing given the significant progress we have made on resilience in recent years.”
Mr Stevens said the ASX would address the areas for improvement.
“ASX is well-advanced in developing a detailed response plan for execution over the next 12 to 18 months, and we’ll commission the independent expert to review our actions and to meet its recommendations,” he said.
The ASX has already taken steps to address the issues raised by the outage including improving working practices for new service releases with Nasdaq; engaging external specialists to better quality assurance and testing; and enhanced its ASX Delivery Frameworks to ensure project delivery was more consistent.
Mr Stevens said the CHESS replacement project was making good progress and was expected to meet its April 2023 go-live date.
ASIC is also undertaking a separate ongoing investigation into the ASX Trade outage to determine whether the ASX met its obligations under its Australian Market Licence.
