The issues affecting the government's e-ID service, which disrupted access to several online government services on Tuesday, have now stabilised after a significantly higher-than-anticipated number of users attempted to access the MATSEC results portal simultaneously, the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) said.

The agency said the disruption occurred after MATSEC issued an SMS and email containing a direct link to the results portal, prompting an exceptional surge in authentication requests against the government's e-ID service.

The e-ID service is used to provide secure access to several online platforms, including the MATSEC results portal, myHealth and other government services, the statement said.

As a result of the surge, some users experienced temporary delays, interruptions or difficulties logging in, the statement said.

MITA said its technical teams responded immediately by implementing mitigation measures and increasing system capacity to stabilise the service.

"The situation is now stable, with users successfully accessing the affected services," the agency said, adding that it will continue monitoring the service closely and take any further action necessary to maintain service availability and performance.

MITA thanked the public, particularly students and their families, for their patience and understanding, and wished all students "the very best with their results and future endeavours," the statement said.

The government’s e-ID service went down earlier on Tuesday, affecting government websites – including the MATSEC website where students were awaiting their exam results.

In a statement on Facebook, the government’s IT agency MITA acknowledged the “disruption” in the service.

“Our technical teams are actively investigating the issue and working to restore the service as quickly as possible,” MITA had said.

“We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience and understanding. Further updates will be provided as they become available,” the authority added.

The outage on Tuesday afternoon left users unable to access government online services such as the MyHealth system and other government websites where an e-ID is required to login.

Students who are awaiting their SEC and A-Level results were also affected: those results were due to come out on Tuesday on the MATSEC portal.

PN MP Jerome Caruana Cilia said on social media that while he understands that technical problems can happen at any time, it’s not acceptable that many students have been left tearing their hair out because the government’s system had collapsed.