Shortly after noon on May 16, 2023, the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) experienced a network failure that impacted most Technology Service Centre (TSC) and department services, including communications (phones, email, network) and critical servers that rely on network connectivity. This included healthcare systems, websites, financial, human resources systems and 9-1-1.
The GNWT and its network support vendor worked together through the night to troubleshoot the issue. Early in the morning of May 17, the root cause was identified as two failed network switches. The two failed switches were replaced, resulting in most services coming back online between 5 and 6 A.M. At approximately 11:30 A.M. on May 17, 9-1-1 services were restored.
We thank residents for their patience throughout the outage. The GNWT is conducting a review to learn more about the circumstances leading to this failure and to assess how to prevent any similar issue from occurring in the future.
For media requests, please contact:
Public Affairs and Communications
Department of Infrastructure
Government of the Northwest Territories