Cyberattack Disrupts Government E-Procurement System for 3 Days
जेठ १९, २०८३ १४:२९
Kathmandu. Nepal’s electronic government procurement (e-GP) system has remained offline for the past three days following a cyberattack, disrupting online public procurement services across the country.
The Public Procurement Monitoring Office (PPMO) confirmed that the system has been inaccessible since Sunday after being targeted by a cyberattack.
PPMO spokesperson Ram Prasad Acharya said government information technology and cybersecurity teams are working to contain the attack and restore services.
“Technical teams are actively engaged in addressing the security issues and bringing the system back into operation,” Acharya said. “To ensure service users are not adversely affected, deadlines for ongoing procurement processes have been extended. Applications can be submitted once the system becomes operational again.”
Authorities have launched an investigation to determine the source of the attack and assess the extent of any damage caused to the system.
Following the disruption, the office extended procurement deadlines. Bids that were scheduled to expire on June 2 have been moved to June 3, while those due on June 3 have been extended to June 4. Earlier, deadlines falling on June 1 and June 2 were also postponed by one day.
The disruption comes months after government employees and construction contractors were arrested on allegations of unauthorized access to the procurement system and manipulation of contract information. While the contractors were later released, government employee Diwakar Deuja, identified as the main accused in the case, remains in custody for further investigation.
However, Acharya clarified that the current cyberattack is unrelated to the earlier incident.
Although an official notice issued by the office initially attributed the outage to heavy system traffic and access restrictions, the PPMO has since confirmed that the service interruption was caused by a cyberattack.
पछिल्लो अध्यावधिक: जेठ १९, २०८३ १४:२९
