Several government websites crash on Monday afternoon

The State Information Technology Agency (Sita) has confirmed that a number of its customers, including government websites, experienced network and connectivity outages on Monday.

Sita said the matter is receiving attention.

“Sita has primary and secondary links for both Cape Town and Centurion centres, an indication that we have redundancy in place. The service provider has, however, experienced failure on both the primary and secondary links, and this has affected a number of internet-related services,” said Sita spokesperson Tlali Tlali.

He said Sita had contacted its service provider to send teams to attend to the incident and to restore services as soon as possible.

“Three teams have been dispatched to test physical fibre infrastructure at locations in Bryanston, Teraco and Centurion respectively. The teams found two breaks on secondary link testing from the Teraco location.

“We apologise for the inconvenience caused to customers and the public by extension. We fully understand the impact such outages have on service delivery and access to government information,” Tlali said.

He added that the matter would be prioritised with the service provider to explore possible solutions and interventions to mitigate the impact on service delivery and customer inconvenience.

Tlali could not immediately tell which government departments had experienced internet-related issues.

TimesLIVE can confirm that the following websites were down earlier on Monday:

• the Government Communication and Information System;
• the department of home affairs;
• the department of water and sanitation, and
• the SA government.

TimesLIVE