Reporting an outage
The loss of a shared service of the Velocity Interoperability Network, or a service that is working badly enough to prevent normal use, is reported to the Support Service under the category Connectivity. The Service does not operate the shared services and does not itself restore them. What it does is confirm that a report has been received, find out whether others have reported the same fault, group the reports into a single incident, tell the office that operates the service, and keep the people who reported the fault informed until it is resolved.
Two checks before reporting save time for everyone. The first is whether the service is listed for planned maintenance by the Status Service, whose notices reach member administrators at least five working days in advance; a request about listed maintenance is closed with a reference to the notice. The second is whether the loss is confined to your own organisation's network, which the Service cannot see and cannot fix. Your administrator can usually answer both questions at once, and where the fault is real the Service asks that the administrator report it once for the organisation rather than each person affected reporting separately.
How to report. The five steps below apply to every report, whoever makes it.
Step 1: Check whether maintenance is planned
The Status Service sends notices of planned maintenance to member administrators at least five working days in advance. Ask your administrator whether a notice has been received for the service. A request about listed maintenance is closed with a reference to the notice.
Step 2: Check whether the fault is local
The Service cannot see your organisation's own network and cannot fix it. If nothing at your site can reach any shared service, or if colleagues at other sites of your organisation are unaffected, the fault is probably local and your administrator is the person to ask.
Step 3: Submit a request under Connectivity
Give the site affected, the time the loss began, the service concerned, roughly how many people are affected and what you see: an error, a page that never loads, a service that is too slow to use. An administrator should report once for the organisation where possible.
Step 4: Quote the reference number in anything further
If the service comes back, if the fault changes, or if more people are affected, write again with the reference number in the subject line. The message is added to the same entry and reaches the officer handling the incident.
Step 5: Expect to be kept informed
You are told when your report has been grouped with others into an incident, when the office that operates the service has been informed, and when the service is confirmed restored. The frequency of updates depends on the class of the incident.
Classes of incident
Every incident is placed in one of four classes according to how widely it is felt. The class decides how quickly the operating office is told, whether the Status Service is asked to publish a notice, and how often those who reported the fault are updated. An incident is reclassed as reports arrive or as the fault spreads or recedes, and reporters are told when it is.
| Class | Extent | What the Service does | Updates to reporters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | One person or one account at one organisation | Treated as an Access request unless a fault in the shared service is found; the organisation's administrator is asked to check the account first | First substantive reply within 5 working days |
| Class 2 | One organisation or one site | Reports are grouped; the administrator is asked to confirm the extent; the office operating the service is told if the fault is not local | On the day the incident is opened, and at each change of status |
| Class 3 | Several organisations, or one region of the Network | The operating office is told at once and the Status Service is asked to publish a notice; further reports are added to the incident as they arrive | At least once each working day until the service is restored |
| Class 4 | A shared service unavailable to every member | The operating office and the Status Service are told at once and the Head of Service is informed; the Service coordinates with the operating office until restoration | At least twice each working day, and a closing report within 5 working days of restoration |
What happens after you report
The sequence below is the same for every report. The times are the maxima set by the Service's standards; most reports of a widespread fault are acknowledged and grouped within the hour.
On receipt
Logged and matched
The report is entered in the register and given a reference number. The registry team compares it with open incidents and with the maintenance notices of the Status Service. A report that concerns listed maintenance is closed with a reference to the notice.
Same working day
Incident opened
Where two or more reports describe the same fault, or one report describes a fault affecting a whole site, an incident is opened and classed. The incident is known by the reference number of the first report received, and every later report is cross-referenced to it. For Class 2 and above, the office that operates the service is told the same day.
Within 2 working days
Every report acknowledged
Each person who reported the fault receives an acknowledgement carrying their own reference number, the reference of the incident it has been grouped with, and the class of the incident.
While the incident is open
Updates at the frequency for the class
Updates go to everyone who has reported the fault. Reports received after the incident opens are added to it and their writers are told the incident reference. The Service asks the operating office for progress at least as often as it updates reporters.
On restoration
Incident closed
The operating office confirms that the service is restored. The Service tells every reporter, closes the incident and closes each individual report at the same time. A reporter who finds the service still unavailable reopens their report by quoting the reference number.
Within 5 working days of restoration
Closing report for Class 3 and 4 incidents
A short report saying what failed, when the fault began and ended, how many reports were received and from how many organisations, and what the operating office has said about the cause. It is sent to every reporter and to the administrators of the organisations affected.
Planned maintenance is not an outage
Work on the shared services that is announced in advance by the Status Service is planned maintenance, and the interruption it causes is not treated as an outage. Notices are sent to member administrators, who pass them on within their organisations. The Support Service does not send the notices and cannot see who has received them.
A connectivity request that concerns listed maintenance is closed with a reference to the notice, and the closure counts as the substantive reply. Fifty-eight such requests were closed in the transition period, most of them from staff whose administrator had received the notice but had not yet circulated it.
Outages in the transition period
- 486
- Connectivity requests received, 10 August to 5 September 2026
- 112
- Distinct incidents once reports of the same fault were grouped
- 58
- Requests closed with a reference to a planned maintenance notice
- 3
- Incidents in which a shared service was unavailable to every member
The figures record the four weeks before establishment, from 10 August to 5 September 2026, when reports were received under interim arrangements. The 486 connectivity requests received in that period resolved, once reports of the same fault were grouped, into 112 incidents. The three Class 4 incidents, in which a shared service was unavailable to every member, together lasted a little under eight hours and drew 75 reports from 41 organisations.
| Class | Incidents | Reports | Longest interruption |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | 44 | 44 | Handled as single requests; not measured as interruptions |
| Class 2 | 51 | 178 | 2 working days |
| Class 3 | 14 | 131 | 9 hours |
| Class 4 | 3 | 75 | 3 hours 40 minutes |
| Closed as planned maintenance | None | 58 | Not an interruption |
| All connectivity requests | 112 | 486 |
Of the 486 requests, 451 were answered by the Service and 35 were referred to the office operating the service concerned, where the fault lay in that office's own systems and not in the connection between it and the member. Forty-nine connectivity requests received a first substantive reply outside the five-working-day standard, almost all of them Class 1 reports received in the last fortnight of the period; the figures by standard are set out under Service standards. The Service will publish the same figures for the period from establishment to 30 September 2026 in October, and quarterly thereafter.
Questions about outages
Other questions may be sent to contact@support.gov.vin. For the categories of request and how to choose between them, see Request categories; for what administrators do when a fault is reported to them, see Guidance for member administrators; for the office that answers each kind of enquiry, see Contact Us.