The key facts

  • The Microsoft outage affected government bodies in Norway, Denmark, and the United Kingdom
  • In Norway, members of parliament lost access to email, and the police experienced problems with Teams and Copilot
  • In Denmark, according to DR, 80–90 municipalities were affected; in the United Kingdom, the outage seriously impacted the NHS

What Happened

A global outage of Microsoft services on Friday disrupted the operations of government institutions, administrations, and other public services in several European countries at once. The first problems in Norway were noted from Thursday evening, when several ministries reported difficulties accessing Microsoft services, including email.

Norway and Denmark

Norway's Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Governance told the broadcaster NRK that its Digitalisation Organisation (DIO) had contacted Microsoft, which said it was working to resolve the problem. The Norwegian police experienced malfunctions with Microsoft Teams, especially when making calls and joining meetings, as well as Copilot failures; however, according to the Police Directorate, the police's central systems and operational capabilities were not affected. All members of the Norwegian parliament reportedly lost access to email. In Denmark, the parliament also reported problems with email while the rest of its systems were working normally, and the broadcaster DR, citing local sources, reported that the outage affected between 80 and 90 municipalities.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the outage reportedly affected millions of people and had a 'serious impact' on the National Health Service (NHS). A number of official government websites announced that they were temporarily unable to receive email: in particular, the education standards body Ofsted posted a notice asking people not to send messages while the global Microsoft outage continues.