Problems with remotely-recorded video assessments have cost hundreds of job applicants the chance to work for the Northern Ireland Civil Service in recent months, it has emerged.
Northern Ireland's finance minister, Caoimhe Archibald, said that so far this financial year 446 candidates had issues such as sound or video failings with their assessment that led to their application not progressing.
In a formal answer to the Northern Ireland Assembly, Archibald said that 2,698 candidates had submitted video assessments for jobs in 2024-25, meaning the tech problems equated to a fail rate of around one-in-six.
The Department of Finance told BBC News that the NICS online interview platform had been through "rigorous testing" before it went live. It said invetigations into issues with the pre-recorded interview process showed that "end user" technical issues were the predominant problem, rather than the platform itself.
A spokesperson said: "The prerecord interview format, which is widely used in both the public and private sector, uses modern technology allowing candidates to complete their interview at a time of their choice. It also speeds up the interview process and reduces costs."
MLA Daniel McCrossan, whose question elicited Archibald's response, said 427 prospective civil servants had faced comparable technical issues the year before.
"For 873 people to lose out due to technical difficulties in the last few years, it is not good enough and the inability to manage online interviews in the correct manner raises serious questions around this entire process," he said.
"I really feel for all of the candidates who applied for these jobs in good faith and have been impacted by this technical failure."
Spike in agency staff numbers prompts questions
Seperately, another ministerial answer from Archibald this week revealed that the number of agency staff working for NICS has increased by more than one-third.
She said 4,015 agency staff were employed by departments at the end of March 2024, up from 2,975 the previous year.
MLA Michelle McIveen, whose request led to the release of the figures, said the increase was "shocking".
She told Irish News that agency staff could gain an unfair advantage in the recruitment for permanent roles and questioned NICS's lack of data on temporary workers who go on to become permanent members of the civil service.
"Agency staff can be hand-picked at the initial stage and then potentially favoured when the permanent recruitment process is carried out as they are in situ," she said.
"It may result in less capable staff being retained and a restriction in the pool of talent being accessed."
McIveen said the Audit Office and NICS head Jayne Brady should investigate why there were no comprehesive records relating to agency staff.
The Irish News said the spike in agency staff evidenced in the March 2024 figures appeared to be largely due to an increase of 1,030 temporary employees at the Department for Communities.
While the March 2024 figures for agency workers were far and away the highest in the five-year set provided by Archibald, a separate table showing NICS spend on agency workers in each of the financial years told a different story.
That dataset revealed that 2023-24 had seen £6.02m spent on agency staff, the lowest amount of any of the five financial years. The highest year for spend was 2021-22, when the cost was £7.15m.
According to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, the NICS full-time-equivalent headcount was 22,333 as of 1 April last year.