State Department: Unclassified Email 'Fully Restored'
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The department said the outage was not due to "external action."
The State Department’s unclassified email system is back online after experiencing a worldwide outage Friday morning.
In a statement, a State Department official told Nextgov its email system has been “fully restored,” and said the outage “was not due to any external action or interference.”
Other communications systems were not affected, according to multiple press reports. The system serves more than 60,000 foreign and civil service employees.
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Late last year, the State Department was dinged by Congress for poorly implementing IT reform practices mandated by federal law.
Chief Information Officer Frontis Wiggins told Nextgov in a March interview that the department had undertaken a significant effort to modernize its older information technology systems, which make up a disproportionate portion of State’s tech spending.
This isn’t the first time State Department has experienced a massive email outage. In 2014, the State Department’s email system was shut down for several days after a breach by Russian hackers.
Editor's note: The headline and article were updated Aug. 18 with State Department comments about the end of the outage.