City

After technical problems, D.C. government websites back online

District of Columbia government websites and 311 services were down Tuesday morning due to technical difficulties, according to a tweet from the government's office of the chief technology officer's Web team.

By Jake Williams

December 9, 2014

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to indicate that the sites are back online and includes new comments from the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer.

District of Columbia government websites and 311 services are now back online after going down Tuesday morning, according to tweets from the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer’s Web team.

“Websites and email were back online as of noon and we expect web services to be back up shortly,” the OCTO told StateScoop in a Twitter reply.

The cause of the problem was not explicitly identified in tweets from the OCTO. However, the agency responsible for running the 311 information service, the DC Office of Unified Communications, said the limited capability of the service was due to “citywide DC.gov tech issues.”

Emergency 911 service was not affected, the tweet said.

The outage extended to some in-person services like the DC Department of Motor Vehicles. According to a tweet from the agency, all online and in-person services for the agency were unavailable due to the districtwide outage.

In addition, according to an OCTO tweet, government email services were offline. The email system started to come back online around noon, a tweet said. As of noon Tuesday, the DMV website was back online and accessible from multiple devices. The DC.gov website, however, remained offline. According to another @DCGovWeb tweet at 12:13 p.m., some government websites were coming back online, but certain Web applications were not yet available.

“We are all hands fixing this issue,” a tweet from the OCTO said.

By 12:24 p.m., the DC.gov homepage was live with a notice identifying the technical issues.

“DC.Gov is experiencing some technical difficulties,” the notice said. “You may not be able to access some web applications like DMV’s ticket payment program. Engineers are working to resolve as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The Office of the Chief Technology Officer did not respond to requests for additional information about the cause of the disruption.

Some of the official tweets as the situation unfolded are below:

http://t.co/0aepyVmssM is experiencing technical difficulties. Engineers are working to resolve. We apologize for the inconvenience.

— DC.Gov (@DCGovWeb) December 9, 2014

311 has limited capability this am due to citywide http://t.co/tq0yx4D0AZ tech. issues. We appreciate your patience. NO issues with 911. — 311 DC Operations (@311DCgov) December 9, 2014

All #DCDMV online and in-person services are unavailable due to a District-wide government outage.

— DC DMV (@dcdmv) December 9, 2014

http://t.co/dGkxQ8jNOu Update: Gov emails starting to come back online. We are all hands fixing issue. We apologize for inconvenience. — DC OCTO (@OCTODC) December 9, 2014

http://t.co/0aepyVmssM sites are coming back online. Web apps (eg DMV’s ticket payment app) are not yet available. Techs still working.

— DC.Gov (@DCGovWeb) December 9, 2014

As @dcgovweb tweeted, websites coming back online now. Working to fix remaining service issues. Thanks everyone for patience. — DC OCTO (@OCTODC) December 9, 2014

http://t.co/0aepyVmssM sites should be back online. Web services, (eg DMV) are also coming back online. We apologize for the inconvenience.

— DC.Gov (@DCGovWeb) December 9, 2014

Online apps now back online. All systems now repaired. We’ll continue to monitor to ensure fixes stick. Thanks to all for patience today. — DC OCTO (@OCTODC) December 9, 2014

Online and in-person services are now available at all #DCDMV locations and website at http://t.co/IPcOkI1gWh.

— DC DMV (@dcdmv) December 9, 2014