NT government departments hit by massive network outage

A massive network outage interrupted all government departments in the Northern Territory today, affecting services from hospitals to policing.

The widespread, intermittent outage struck about 3am and affected all government agencies, from education to housing, in both urban and remote areas.

Earlier today, NT Police said Triple Zero (000) calls were not being affected. However, this afternoon, Assistant Commissioner Terry Zhang said three Triple Zero calls had been missed.

"Since the start of the outage … there have only been three phone calls that we couldn't answer in time that were referred to us very soon after that by Telstra," he said.

"We have conducted follow-ups with all three of those missed telephone calls, and there have been no issues identified.

"None of them were high risk or had any consequences; it was just routine police follow-ups."

NT Police advised there had been interruptions to the police non-emergency line throughout the day. 

The NT government said the issue occurred inside a "core" IT gateway for NT government services. 

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said the Territory-wide IT outage had caused "significant disruption to all of our IT networks".

"We have mechanisms in place to continue with business as usual until we find the source, which will be subject to a serious inquiry," she said.

'Not a hack'

Department of Corporate and Digital Development deputy chief executive Greg Connors said a team of up to 40 people had been working all day to isolate the cause of the outage.

Mr Connors said workarounds had been implemented this afternoon and the systems were effectively back to normal.

He also said the team believed it had identified the root cause and expected to resolve it this evening.  

"I can guarantee you this is not a cyber hack, this is something that is internal," he said.

"It's a bit like getting in your car one day, and it goes, even though there have been no signs it was going to break down prior.

"It is just one of those things that happens. We have found [the issue], which is great kudos to all my team that spent all day looking for it.

"We are confident once we have fixed it, it will be back to normal."

Mr Connors said the outage had a "widespread impact", including in hospitals, where staff had to initiate continuity plans.

"Clinicians in hospitals would have experienced delays, [they] would have experienced not being able to get to services, not being able to get to impacted systems," he said.

He said he could not rule out future outages, but said any that did occur would not be because of the same problem.