Government e-ID websites back online after five-hour outage
MATSEC website was among affected portals as students waited for exam results
Updated 7.06pm
Several government websites requiring users to log in through their e-ID account were restored on Tuesday evening after an outage lasting around five hours, which affected access to the MATSEC portal on the day exam results were released.
A government spokesperson said the issue was "fully solved" just after 7pm.
The affected portals included several government websites such as the Planning Authority, the My Health portal, eCourts, Malta Business Registry and MATSEC.
Users attempting to log in to their accounts were met with an error message informing them that the web server is down.
The outage comes on the day that MATSEC was scheduled to release SEC and matriculation exam results,
One reader told Times of Malta how they were unable to check their son’s exam results on the MATSEC site.
However, students are believed to still be receiving exam results by SMS.
'I can understand the disappointment'
Education Minister Byron Camilleri told parliament the MATSEC website was slowly coming back online on Tuesday afternoon and some students had already accessed it for their results.
MITA informed him they were prioritising it over the other government services given that thousands of students were anxiously waiting to access their results, he said.
"The entire E-ID system was down. All online government services, including My Health, the planning and the justice portals were down," he said.
"I can understand the disappointment thousands of students must have felt when they couldn't access their results after months of hard work. We all know the feeling because we've all been there. This is why we are working to restore that system before all the others. I'm informed some students have already accessed the portal as we're speaking," he said.
He also said he could not answer for the E-ID outage as this was not the remit of his ministry. He was replying to questions from government MP Romilda Zarb and opposition MP Darren Carabott.
In a Facebook post, PN shadow education spokesperson Jerome Caruana Cilia said it was "unacceptable" for students who were eagerly waiting exam results to be left in limbo because "the government's system collapses immediately".
Questions have been sent to MITA.