GNWT websites disappear for second time in a week

Government of the Northwest Territories websites continued to experience problems on Friday afternoon after their second outage in a week, following a blip on Sunday.

The outage again appeared to affect all departmental websites plus those of branches like the NWT Legislative Assembly and the territory’s health authority. Some affected websites reported a “network error.”

Though many government services could not be accessed, some that are hosted by third parties – such as bookings for Covid-19 tests or boosters, the form for self-isolation plans, and the GNWT’s Covid-19 dashboard – remained available.

The causes of the Sunday and Friday outages were not immediately clear. The latest outage appeared to begin just after 11am on Friday. Websites returned to service as of 12:30pm but their availability fluctuated as the afternoon wore on.

On Sunday, GNWT websites were down for around an hour before returning to service. At one point on Sunday, some sites stated: “This website is undergoing routine maintenance. It should be back online shortly. Thank you for your patience.”

GNWT websites are powered by open-source content management software named Drupal, though several employees on Friday reported problems accessing email, implying a wider issue.

The territorial government has been approached for comment.