Running electoral registration - England

Actions to take if you cannot access the IER Digital Service

Determine the source of the outage

You should contact your organisation’s IT department in the first instance. If the issue does not appear to be a local one, you should contact the IER Digital Service to access information on the status of the IER Digital Service.

Assess the problem

You should determine if the service outage will have a critical impact on voter registration. Factors to consider include:

• the proximity of any registration deadlines
• the volume of outstanding applications to be processed
• the projected resolution time of the service outage
• what resources are available to them to carry out the registration process in a timely fashion

For example, an outage during the ordinary rolling registration monthly cycle where an election deadline is not imminent may not be deemed to have a critical impact, therefore applications could be determined after the service has been resumed.

Report the problem 

You should report local issues to your organisation’s IT department or your EMS supplier if the problem appears to be EMS based. You should check for any communications from the IER Support Centre and, if no information on your issue, report it to the IER Support Centre. The Support Centre will discuss with you the potential solutions and will have measures in place to resolve many of the most likely issues around local connectivity to the IER service.

Decide whether to deploy contingencies 

You should use the information you have gathered under the previous steps to decide whether to invoke your contingency plans. 

Record your actions

You should make a record of any issue, whether you implemented contingency plans, what actions you took, and what the outcomes were. This information may prove useful in the event of any challenge to your decisions.