The Australian government bureaux of statistics had a census yesterday. Every aussie, wherever in the world they happened to be, and to fill in the on-line census form before midnight. For those living in London, they tried to do this late afternoon in order to meet the deadline. No luck! it’s down with a message saying “Sorry Mate, our servers are currently shagged. Please try later and we’ll forget about the fine this time.” Or words to that effect.
On trying again this morning, it was still out of action.
I wonder if all the Australians in the world decided to leave it to the last couple of hours of the day, and whoever designed the system didn’t consider what the peak load might be?
Please don’t click here to see for yourself, as their servers are overloaded enough already.
Update: 10-Aug-16 17:06
Apparently they’re now blaming it of foreign hackers or a DoS. There was some controversy about the security of an on-line census before the event; I see a “told you so” slanging match before long!