The department of home affairs warned on Thursday that its systems were offline due to what it described as a “technical problem” with the mainframe of its service provider.

In a statement, the department said a problem with the State IT Agency (Sita) mainframe has led to the issue. This, it said, has affected its ability to access to the National Population Register.

“We have contacted Sita and have been assured that its technicians and engineers are attending to the matter. We hope that this will not take long to be resolved.”

It didn’t immediately provide further information.

Sita spokesman Tlali Tlali confirmed that the home affairs department had experienced an “interruption in service provisioning to the public because of a technical glitch associated with Sita’s mainframe infrastructure”.

“The incident has now been resolved and services associated with the glitch have been restored,” he said.

“The glitch occurred on Wednesday and was characterised as a data replication and synchronisation issue between two communication sites within the Sita environment, resulting in delays in the processing and transmission of information handled at various home affairs offices, including the Live Capture services.”

The mainframe affected is responsible for housing DHA data.