Auckland University staff and students appear to have been forced back to pen and paper because of an information technology outage today.

Paul Matthews, chief executive of the Institute for Information Technology Professionals, said all the university's IT services had been knocked offline by of a power failure at the university's main datacentre. He questioned why backup systems did not kick in.

The university's external relations office manager, Pramilla Andrew, confirmed there was a problem with the university's IT systems but was unable to transfer calls to staff with more information.

The university's main switchboard number was this afternoon playing a recorded message that informed callers the university was experiencing "system problem" [sic] and then cut off calls.

It is understood the fault is also affecting the Auckland University of Technology, whose systems are hosted by Auckland University. Its website was offline this afternoon.

Auckland University was last year ranked as the country's seventh largest IT user by technology magazine MIS, based on its number of computers.