IT failures take out government websites

Several websites were unreachable throughout Tuesday due to a fault at the hosting provider Prolocation. Unreachable websites include both the government's Dutch and English sites, Rijksoverheijd.nl and Government.nl, Dutch blog site GeenStijl.nl and telecommunication firm Telfort's site. 

The cause of the fault is unclear, but Prolocation client and advertising network Platform IQ says it is due to a fiber optic cable break in an Amsterdam data center.

Both government websites have been down since at least 10:30 a.m. "We are working hard on a solution," a government representative said at that time on Twitter. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

Because the Rijksoverheid.nl was down the entire business day, Ministries could not send or receive parliamentary papers. People are hard at work to get the site back up again, reported the Ministry of General Affairs. As of 4 p.m. Tuesday the sites still did not come online.

The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) has no evidence of a cyber attack, says De Telegraaf. NCSC did not reveal details of the cause of the fault either.

Government service DigiD and the tax office Belastingdienst are both still online.

GeenStijl and broadcaster PowNed have managed to get slimmed down versions of their sites online. PowNed reported their problems on Twitter just after 11:50 a.m.

It is not known how long the failure will last.