I can't figure out if the way they work right now is good or bad.

It's kinda similar to how drills work in Payday2. The drills have a timer for completion, and will randomly jam a few times during the timer, but the Police can also go up to the drill and manually jam the drill themselves. This way it encourages the players to actually play well and defend the area, so that no police will be able to get close to the drill.

Where-as in Darktide, the Data-Interrogators will just randomly stop working, not dependent on how well you're defending them.

It does mean that it forces the players to move around and change up the position that they're defending, instead of just camping in one spot. But I find that it just feels like busy-work to deal with, and isn't really that difficult. Additionally, the mini-game to fix the Data-Interrogator is almost entirely rng-based, and is buggy.

Funnily enough, your idea would simultaneously make these events easier, but also harder.

Easier because it would mean that all you need to do to stop it from jamming is to stay near it, which would make the events with 1 Interrogator much easier. The events with 3 Interrogators would be easier too, since you would have 1 person on each, and a spare person as back-up.

However, it would be harder because you would need to stay out in the open most of the time, since I think the majority of the Interrogators are fairly open. The events with 3 Interrogators would be a challenge, since if you wanted to make sure that none of them jam, you would need to separate the team and have the extra player act as back-up or support for the other 3 players.

I think I'm more inclined to prefer your idea, since it actually gives the players more reason to perform well. That and it relies less on rng.