The Consular Affairs Bureau of the State Department is currently experiencing technical difficulties and is unable to issue a passport, Report of Birth Abroad, or visa at this time, indicating that these difficulties are global and do not affect a particular country, citizenship or visa category.

The Consular Affairs Bureau of the State Department explains :

Question : What is going on? Why can’t the Department issue visas, passports, and other travel documents ?

"The Consular Consolidated Database (CCD), our system of record, has experienced significant performance issues, including outages, since Saturday, July 19. These performance issues have resulted in an extensive backlog which has further hindered our efforts to return to normal operations. Visas, passports, and other travel documents are approved, recorded, and printed using the CCD system, which is designed to ensure that we perform required national security checks before we issue visas. When the system goes down, we are unable to print visas, passports and other travel documents. We apologize to applicants and recognize that this may cause hardship to applicants waiting for visas and passports. We are working to correct the issue as quickly as possible."

Question : Why can’t you just print without using the system ?

"Security measures prevent consular officers from printing a passport, report of birth abroad, or visa unless it is approved through our database system. Until the system is brought back online and we are able to work through the backlog, service to our customers will be interrupted."

Question : Why is it taking longer to issue Passports ?

"Passport agencies use the same system prior to issuing passport books and cards. The performance problems with the system are impacting the agencies’ ability to issue passports in a timely fashion"

Question : What caused this outage ? Was it a malicious action or hack ?

"No. Our database crashed shortly after maintenance was performed. The root cause of the problem is not yet known. We are working urgently to correct the problem and expect the system to be fully operational again soon."

HL/ HaitiLibre