Contact Us
The Support Service of the Velocity Interoperability Network receives enquiries on behalf of the departments and offices of the Velocity Interoperability Network. All correspondence is by email. Requests may be submitted through the request form or sent to contact@support.gov.vin. The Service has no telephone line and no public counter; this is deliberate, so that every request is written down, logged and given a reference number before anything is done with it.
The Service answers what it can and refers the rest. The table further down this page lists the kinds of enquiry the Service receives, says which office answers each, and gives the reply you should expect. Where an enquiry is for another office you may write to that office directly or to the Service; either way, the office concerned replies to you.
Before you write. Four short steps save time for you and for the Service.
Step 1: Check the FAQ
The questions most often put to the Service are answered there. A request that repeats an answer given in the FAQ is closed with a reference to it.
Step 2: Find the right row in the table below
If your enquiry is for another office, the table says so. Writing to that office directly saves a working day; writing to the Service is never wrong, and the request will be referred.
Step 3: Choose the form or email
The request form asks the questions the Service needs for each category. Email is accepted for any matter; give the same particulars the form would ask for.
Step 4: Quote any reference number you already hold
If you are following up a request, put the reference number in the subject line so that the new message is added to the existing entry rather than opening a second one.
Where to send your enquiry
| Kind of enquiry | Where it goes | Expected reply |
|---|---|---|
| Access to a shared service | Support Service, under the category Access | Acknowledged within 2 working days; first substantive reply within 5 |
| Sign-in and account problems | Support Service, under the category Access; referred to the Identity Service where the account is held there | Acknowledged within 2 working days; referred, where necessary, within 1 |
| Loss of connectivity or an outage not listed as planned | Support Service, under the category Connectivity | Acknowledged within 2 working days; first substantive reply within 5 |
| Planned maintenance | Status Service, which announces it in advance to member administrators | No reply is needed; a connectivity request that concerns listed maintenance is closed with a reference to the notice |
| Interpretation of a standard | Standards Office, by referral from the Support Service under the category Standards | Referred within 1 working day; the Standards Office replies to you directly |
| Certification and compatibility marks | Standards Office | Referred within 1 working day; the Standards Office replies to you directly |
| Membership applications and registry entries | Registry | Referred within 1 working day; the Support Service does not accept applications |
| Security incidents | Defence Department, by the emergency channel published to member administrators | Not handled by the Support Service; do not report an incident through this site |
| Press and media | Support Service, under the category Other | Acknowledged within 2 working days; reply within 10 |
| Accessibility of this website | Support Service, under the category Other | Acknowledged within 2 working days; the problem is corrected or the content supplied in another format |
| Complaints about the Support Service | Support Service, under the category Other, marked as a complaint | Acknowledged within 2 working days; reviewed by an officer not involved in the original request; reply within 10 |
| Employment with the Support Service | Careers Office, which publishes the vacancies of the Network | The Support Service does not accept applications |
Times are working days of the Network counted from the day the request is received; the rules by which they are measured are set out under Service standards. A reply from another office follows that office's own standards, which the Support Service does not measure. For the four categories of the request form and how to choose between them, see Request categories; for the particular procedure that follows a report of a lost service, see Reporting an outage.
Enquiries in figures
- 2,146
- Requests received under interim arrangements, 10 August to 5 September 2026
- 1,664
- Requests answered by the Service itself
- 482
- Requests referred to the department or office responsible
- 96%
- Requests acknowledged within two working days
The figures record the four weeks before establishment, from 10 August to 5 September 2026, when requests were received under interim arrangements by the help desks of member organisations and by the Service's establishment team. Every request received in that period was transferred to the register of the Service on 5 September and given a reference number, and the 138 that remained open at establishment are being answered in the order in which they were received.
| Category | Received | Answered by the Service | Referred | Closed by 5 September |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Access | 1,012 | 968 | 44 | 941 |
| Connectivity | 486 | 451 | 35 | 462 |
| Standards | 203 | 27 | 176 | 203 |
| Other | 445 | 218 | 227 | 402 |
| All categories | 2,146 | 1,664 | 482 | 2,008 |
Access requests were the largest category, and most of them came from staff of organisations whose administrator had not yet been given the means to create accounts. The Service expects this category to fall as administrators take over that work; see Guidance for member administrators. Standards requests are referred almost without exception; the 27 answered by the Service were questions about where a standard is published rather than what it means.
Membership matters, which have no category of their own on the form, account for 158 of the 445 requests submitted under Other and for most of the referrals in that category. The Service will publish figures for the period from establishment to 30 September 2026 in October, and quarterly thereafter; each report is announced in the Newsroom. Questions about these figures may be sent to contact@support.gov.vin.