Headlines February
Working time reduction at companies that have problems with coronavirus
A crisis measure for employees of Dutch companies where there is temporarily less work will also be used for sales drops caused by the corona virus. The entrepreneurs' organization for the technology industry, FME, says that these problems fall under the criteria for working time reduction. The Ministry of Social Affairs confirms that the scheme that is intended to compensate for a temporary fall in turnover can be used for this. The first companies have now used it. The temporary measure applies to companies in the Netherlands that can prove that they have 20 percent less work due to the corona virus for at least two weeks. The measure lasts a maximum of 24 weeks. The employer can reduce the number of hours for which there is no work. The employee will then receive a payment for the hours not worked. The employee remains fully employed by the company.
Shrinking stocks
China is a hub in the supply chains of many industries. Many Dutch companies in the technology and automotive industries, among others, depend on factories that have been down for weeks now. As a result, they quickly run out of stocks.
Source: https://nos.nl/artikel/2323751-werktijdverkorting-bij-bedrijven-die-problemen-hebben-door-coronavirus.html
Coronavirus has consequences for fishing companies
Since this week, fishing companies from Urk have to deal with the effects of the corona virus in China. Because KLM is scraping flights to the Asian country, crabs cannot be exported. Fish wholesale Koos de Jong from Urk is one of the companies that exports crabs to the country. According to financial director Willem van Veen, it is not only KLM flights that throw a spanner in the works. At the beginning of this week, he was sent videos showing that there are almost no people walking in the local markets. The Chinese currently avoid places where there are many people. Van Veen is now busy looking for other buyers for his North Sea, Blue and King crabs.
An uncertain time
Anja Keuter, from fish company Live Seafood Urk, also notices the consequences of the corona virus. She also catches crab with her fishing company, but cannot do this now. That costs her company around 3000 euros a week. "Normally we export crab to China two or three times a week," Keuter said. She received an email today from airline KLM that fresh fish is no longer being transported to China and that from 2 February there will no longer be any direct flights to China. The consequences for Keuter's company can be overseen because it is a family business. "As a result, there is no need to pay for staff, we just have to do it ourselves with less." De Urkse is very curious as to how long this will take and what the longer term consequences will be.
Source: https://nos.nl/artikel/2323751-werktijdverkorting-bij-bedrijven-die-problemen-hebben-door-coronavirus.html
Letter package explodes in mail room in Kerkrade
On Wednesday morning a letter package exploded in the mailroom of a company in Kerkrade. It happened at 8.30 a.m. at print and office supplies company Ricoh, located on Wiebachstraat.
Strange sound
According to a police spokesperson, this is a package. An employee of the company heard a strange noise in the mail item. Then a bang followed. "We acted well by throwing it away when we heard a hissing sound. It could have turned out quite differently," the police spokesman said. "We can certainly speak of happiness." According to him, the explosion is similar to exploding fireworks that can cause physical injury.
Nobody injured No one was injured
in the explosion. Nine people were present in the building at the time of the explosion, a police spokesperson said. They are housed in an adjacent building. The staff members were also heard about what they saw and were given. The investigation takes into account whether the package was addressed to this company or whether it was only affected.
Released
A team of explosives experts has done research. The Defense Explosives Clearance Service arrived later. The building was released around 12:00. There is no immediate danger to the environment. The building, which was damaged to a limited extent by the explosion, is currently closed for investigation.
Relation
Wednesday morning there was also an explosion in an ABN AMRO mailroom in Amsterdam, probably due to a bomb letter. Whether there is a relation between the two cases is still unclear. "We are going to discuss with colleagues in Amsterdam whether there are connections such as the same type of package," says the police spokesperson. The explosion took place at both locations in a building on a business park.
January
In January bomb letters were delivered to companies in several cities. One of the letters was intended for a company in Maastricht, but did not arrive there. None of the letters exploded at the time.
https://www.1limburg.nl/briefpakket-ontploft-postkamer-kerkrade?context=topstory
Possible criminal offenses due to archiving information at the municipality of Almere
The municipality of Almere may commit criminal offenses because it does not have its archives in order. Within most departments, analog and digital archives are destroyed outside the legal procedure. This leads to major risks with regard to the loss of valuable information, which is considered a criminal offense. This is stated in a report from the province, which checks the municipality in this area. The report shows that there is a lot wrong with archiving in the city. The managers do not know and do not prioritize basic internal rules in the field of archiving. Almere wanted a completely digital archive years ago, but that development was not fully continued. As a result, there are now analog and digital archives on the same subject. This presents major risks of incomplete and missing information. In addition, the municipality cannot guarantee that files are complete, well-ordered and in an accessible state. Also, a backlog of hundreds of linear meters of paper archive over the period 1990-2011 has still not been eliminated. If the municipality does not quickly do something about the laundry list with imperfections, the province will intervene. In fact, Almere has been blamed more often in recent years. An action plan must be ready by 15 February.
https://www.omroepflevoland.nl/nieuws/178089/mogelijk-strafbare-feiten-bij-archivering-gemeente-almere
Hospitals not well prepared for disruptions
Hospitals know that they depend on computer systems, but they are not always well prepared for the risks of major disruptions. That is why they need to better identify what those risks are, advises the Dutch Safety Board (OVV).
In recent years there have been several major computer failures at hospitals. It can cause the cessation of treatments and operations, such as at the Racboud UMC in Nijmegen. Doctors and doctors could not access the patient records in the event of the disruptions. They took good care of patients, but afterwards they did not look at the consequences, says the Dutch Safety Board.
Future
According to the Dutch Safety Board, hospitals have now become IT organizations. "Many hospital operations are only possible if the IT functions: viewing patient data, making appointments, passing on laboratory results and issuing medication," the report says. IT will become even more important in the future. Crucial devices are becoming increasingly dependent on the hospital network. "Monitoring patients remotely via telephone or tablet will become a daily practice in the future. Analogue work is disappearing more and more often, causing problems if IT fails."
Plan
The researchers recommend that the system be tested regularly and that good emergency plans are ready. Hospitals must also work together and learn from each other in the field of ICT.
https://www.rtvdrenthe.nl/nieuws/157196/Ziekenhuizen-niet-goed-genoeg-voorbereid-op-storingen
Emergency hospital Rotterdam and Schiedam open again after a long computer failure
Emergency care at the Franciscus Gasthuis & Vlietland is open again. This applies to both locations of the hospital, in Rotterdam and in Schiedam. The computers were not working properly for hours after a network update that was performed early this morning. The result was that the hospital cannot be reached by telephone. The doctors and nurses were also unable to consult the electronic patient records. The medical equipment worked. Around 2.45 pm the malfunction was corrected, a spokesperson for the hospital told Rijnmond . Scheduled operations that were put on hold are started in the course of the afternoon.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2323140-spoedeisende-hulp-ziekenhuis-rotterdam-en-schiedam-weer-open.html
How in a hospital in Hoorn the emergency room had to be closed due to a server malfunction
While the temperature in Hoorn passes 25 degrees around noon, employees of a specialized company try to keep the heat out of the data center of the Dijkland hospital. They want to raise the floor on this sunny summer day in 2018 in order to cool the servers better. But a few hours later, all the ICT systems in the hospital are out and the Emergency Department has to close its doors. The obstetrics department, the heart monitoring and the operating rooms are also largely closed. How is that possible? The incident in the Dijklander Hospital - at that time still the Westfriesgasthuis - is not isolated. Relatively small IT problems can have major consequences for patients due to a combination of circumstances, according to research by the Dutch Safety Board that appeared today . The conclusion is that hospitals do too little to prevent that.
Second team
At the hospital in Hoorn, they thought they were doing well. If a computer server fails due to an error, another system takes over. That is good practice among system administrators: because of the so-called redundancy, to put it in football terms, there is always a second team ready to take over if the first suddenly gets completely injured. But that does not happen on that summer day in 2018. The hired technicians lift and tilt a cupboard with running computer servers. A crucial part of the storage system, containing the electronic patient records, will probably be broken.
Paper backup
The hospital does have a paper backup, for when all ICT stops. But that is not perfect: everything that was already in the digital patient file is still not accessible. And after the failure, all files must be entered into the system again. Elsewhere in the hospital, the recovery team takes over. An ICT employee will be notified that something is wrong with the first team, but cannot find a problem. Because he sees that all balls go to the second team, he chooses to switch on the first one again. It goes wrong there, because the first team is not waiting for the ball, but is completely eliminated. The problems start almost immediately. "That sum ensured that the systems went black everywhere in the hospital," says Marein van der Torn, ENT doctor and the hospital 's chief medical information officer. At those moments, a kind of emergency patient file should be released, but that does not happen either. That is why the crisis team decides to initiate a patient stop.
Fall out
This way things go wrong more often, the Dutch Safety Board states. "With the major IT failures that we investigated, you see that several systems are failing one after the other. And we are not well prepared for that now," says chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Hospitals do not test and practice enough. "And that must happen." And so it went wrong at Radboud Hospital in Nijmegen: a storage server broke down there too. And in the IJsselland hospital in Capelle aan den IJssel, a network failure and miscommunication caused a patient stop to be initiated. Ten such malfunctions occur every year in hospitals, the OVV writes. And once systems are down, it can be a lot of work to get things back on track. In Hoorn the malfunction was not over until after 10 pm, although the First Aid could be reopened after a few hours. As far as we know, the failure did not lead to health problems for patients, although operations had to be postponed. The Dutch Safety Board fears that patients' health may ultimately be at risk if hospitals cannot get their affairs in order. In the Dijkland hospital, they have released an extra emergency patient file since the outage. That is in a different place: if all computers in the hospital fail, the EPD, electronic patient files, can still be reached via the internet.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2322879-hoe-in-hoorn-door-een-kapotte-server-de-spoedeisende-hulp-dicht-moest.html
A crisis measure for employees of Dutch companies where there is temporarily less work will also be used for sales drops caused by the corona virus. The entrepreneurs' organization for the technology industry, FME, says that these problems fall under the criteria for working time reduction. The Ministry of Social Affairs confirms that the scheme that is intended to compensate for a temporary fall in turnover can be used for this. The first companies have now used it. The temporary measure applies to companies in the Netherlands that can prove that they have 20 percent less work due to the corona virus for at least two weeks. The measure lasts a maximum of 24 weeks. The employer can reduce the number of hours for which there is no work. The employee will then receive a payment for the hours not worked. The employee remains fully employed by the company.
Shrinking stocks
China is a hub in the supply chains of many industries. Many Dutch companies in the technology and automotive industries, among others, depend on factories that have been down for weeks now. As a result, they quickly run out of stocks.
Source: https://nos.nl/artikel/2323751-werktijdverkorting-bij-bedrijven-die-problemen-hebben-door-coronavirus.html
Coronavirus has consequences for fishing companies
Since this week, fishing companies from Urk have to deal with the effects of the corona virus in China. Because KLM is scraping flights to the Asian country, crabs cannot be exported. Fish wholesale Koos de Jong from Urk is one of the companies that exports crabs to the country. According to financial director Willem van Veen, it is not only KLM flights that throw a spanner in the works. At the beginning of this week, he was sent videos showing that there are almost no people walking in the local markets. The Chinese currently avoid places where there are many people. Van Veen is now busy looking for other buyers for his North Sea, Blue and King crabs.
An uncertain time
Anja Keuter, from fish company Live Seafood Urk, also notices the consequences of the corona virus. She also catches crab with her fishing company, but cannot do this now. That costs her company around 3000 euros a week. "Normally we export crab to China two or three times a week," Keuter said. She received an email today from airline KLM that fresh fish is no longer being transported to China and that from 2 February there will no longer be any direct flights to China. The consequences for Keuter's company can be overseen because it is a family business. "As a result, there is no need to pay for staff, we just have to do it ourselves with less." De Urkse is very curious as to how long this will take and what the longer term consequences will be.
Source: https://nos.nl/artikel/2323751-werktijdverkorting-bij-bedrijven-die-problemen-hebben-door-coronavirus.html
Letter package explodes in mail room in Kerkrade
On Wednesday morning a letter package exploded in the mailroom of a company in Kerkrade. It happened at 8.30 a.m. at print and office supplies company Ricoh, located on Wiebachstraat.
Strange sound
According to a police spokesperson, this is a package. An employee of the company heard a strange noise in the mail item. Then a bang followed. "We acted well by throwing it away when we heard a hissing sound. It could have turned out quite differently," the police spokesman said. "We can certainly speak of happiness." According to him, the explosion is similar to exploding fireworks that can cause physical injury.
Nobody injured No one was injured
in the explosion. Nine people were present in the building at the time of the explosion, a police spokesperson said. They are housed in an adjacent building. The staff members were also heard about what they saw and were given. The investigation takes into account whether the package was addressed to this company or whether it was only affected.
Released
A team of explosives experts has done research. The Defense Explosives Clearance Service arrived later. The building was released around 12:00. There is no immediate danger to the environment. The building, which was damaged to a limited extent by the explosion, is currently closed for investigation.
Relation
Wednesday morning there was also an explosion in an ABN AMRO mailroom in Amsterdam, probably due to a bomb letter. Whether there is a relation between the two cases is still unclear. "We are going to discuss with colleagues in Amsterdam whether there are connections such as the same type of package," says the police spokesperson. The explosion took place at both locations in a building on a business park.
January
In January bomb letters were delivered to companies in several cities. One of the letters was intended for a company in Maastricht, but did not arrive there. None of the letters exploded at the time.
https://www.1limburg.nl/briefpakket-ontploft-postkamer-kerkrade?context=topstory
Possible criminal offenses due to archiving information at the municipality of Almere
The municipality of Almere may commit criminal offenses because it does not have its archives in order. Within most departments, analog and digital archives are destroyed outside the legal procedure. This leads to major risks with regard to the loss of valuable information, which is considered a criminal offense. This is stated in a report from the province, which checks the municipality in this area. The report shows that there is a lot wrong with archiving in the city. The managers do not know and do not prioritize basic internal rules in the field of archiving. Almere wanted a completely digital archive years ago, but that development was not fully continued. As a result, there are now analog and digital archives on the same subject. This presents major risks of incomplete and missing information. In addition, the municipality cannot guarantee that files are complete, well-ordered and in an accessible state. Also, a backlog of hundreds of linear meters of paper archive over the period 1990-2011 has still not been eliminated. If the municipality does not quickly do something about the laundry list with imperfections, the province will intervene. In fact, Almere has been blamed more often in recent years. An action plan must be ready by 15 February.
https://www.omroepflevoland.nl/nieuws/178089/mogelijk-strafbare-feiten-bij-archivering-gemeente-almere
Hospitals not well prepared for disruptions
Hospitals know that they depend on computer systems, but they are not always well prepared for the risks of major disruptions. That is why they need to better identify what those risks are, advises the Dutch Safety Board (OVV).
In recent years there have been several major computer failures at hospitals. It can cause the cessation of treatments and operations, such as at the Racboud UMC in Nijmegen. Doctors and doctors could not access the patient records in the event of the disruptions. They took good care of patients, but afterwards they did not look at the consequences, says the Dutch Safety Board.
Future
According to the Dutch Safety Board, hospitals have now become IT organizations. "Many hospital operations are only possible if the IT functions: viewing patient data, making appointments, passing on laboratory results and issuing medication," the report says. IT will become even more important in the future. Crucial devices are becoming increasingly dependent on the hospital network. "Monitoring patients remotely via telephone or tablet will become a daily practice in the future. Analogue work is disappearing more and more often, causing problems if IT fails."
Plan
The researchers recommend that the system be tested regularly and that good emergency plans are ready. Hospitals must also work together and learn from each other in the field of ICT.
https://www.rtvdrenthe.nl/nieuws/157196/Ziekenhuizen-niet-goed-genoeg-voorbereid-op-storingen
Emergency hospital Rotterdam and Schiedam open again after a long computer failure
Emergency care at the Franciscus Gasthuis & Vlietland is open again. This applies to both locations of the hospital, in Rotterdam and in Schiedam. The computers were not working properly for hours after a network update that was performed early this morning. The result was that the hospital cannot be reached by telephone. The doctors and nurses were also unable to consult the electronic patient records. The medical equipment worked. Around 2.45 pm the malfunction was corrected, a spokesperson for the hospital told Rijnmond . Scheduled operations that were put on hold are started in the course of the afternoon.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2323140-spoedeisende-hulp-ziekenhuis-rotterdam-en-schiedam-weer-open.html
How in a hospital in Hoorn the emergency room had to be closed due to a server malfunction
While the temperature in Hoorn passes 25 degrees around noon, employees of a specialized company try to keep the heat out of the data center of the Dijkland hospital. They want to raise the floor on this sunny summer day in 2018 in order to cool the servers better. But a few hours later, all the ICT systems in the hospital are out and the Emergency Department has to close its doors. The obstetrics department, the heart monitoring and the operating rooms are also largely closed. How is that possible? The incident in the Dijklander Hospital - at that time still the Westfriesgasthuis - is not isolated. Relatively small IT problems can have major consequences for patients due to a combination of circumstances, according to research by the Dutch Safety Board that appeared today . The conclusion is that hospitals do too little to prevent that.
Second team
At the hospital in Hoorn, they thought they were doing well. If a computer server fails due to an error, another system takes over. That is good practice among system administrators: because of the so-called redundancy, to put it in football terms, there is always a second team ready to take over if the first suddenly gets completely injured. But that does not happen on that summer day in 2018. The hired technicians lift and tilt a cupboard with running computer servers. A crucial part of the storage system, containing the electronic patient records, will probably be broken.
Paper backup
The hospital does have a paper backup, for when all ICT stops. But that is not perfect: everything that was already in the digital patient file is still not accessible. And after the failure, all files must be entered into the system again. Elsewhere in the hospital, the recovery team takes over. An ICT employee will be notified that something is wrong with the first team, but cannot find a problem. Because he sees that all balls go to the second team, he chooses to switch on the first one again. It goes wrong there, because the first team is not waiting for the ball, but is completely eliminated. The problems start almost immediately. "That sum ensured that the systems went black everywhere in the hospital," says Marein van der Torn, ENT doctor and the hospital 's chief medical information officer. At those moments, a kind of emergency patient file should be released, but that does not happen either. That is why the crisis team decides to initiate a patient stop.
Fall out
This way things go wrong more often, the Dutch Safety Board states. "With the major IT failures that we investigated, you see that several systems are failing one after the other. And we are not well prepared for that now," says chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Hospitals do not test and practice enough. "And that must happen." And so it went wrong at Radboud Hospital in Nijmegen: a storage server broke down there too. And in the IJsselland hospital in Capelle aan den IJssel, a network failure and miscommunication caused a patient stop to be initiated. Ten such malfunctions occur every year in hospitals, the OVV writes. And once systems are down, it can be a lot of work to get things back on track. In Hoorn the malfunction was not over until after 10 pm, although the First Aid could be reopened after a few hours. As far as we know, the failure did not lead to health problems for patients, although operations had to be postponed. The Dutch Safety Board fears that patients' health may ultimately be at risk if hospitals cannot get their affairs in order. In the Dijkland hospital, they have released an extra emergency patient file since the outage. That is in a different place: if all computers in the hospital fail, the EPD, electronic patient files, can still be reached via the internet.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2322879-hoe-in-hoorn-door-een-kapotte-server-de-spoedeisende-hulp-dicht-moest.html
Translated from Dutch to English with Google translate