The British government said today it had been forced to suspend one of its most high-profile websites.
Whitehall webmasters pulled the plug on the Government Gateway - a secure website which lets users deal with tax and VAT online - after a computer overheated.
The Cabinet Office said the site's 165,000 registered users would be unable to access their accounts with the Inland Revenue, HM Customs and Excise and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The site was shut down yesterday morning after an overheating problem was found in the hardware, a Cabinet Office spokeswoman said.
Engineers have been working through the night and all today to fix the problem and get the site back up.
Visitors to the site were greeted by a white screen and the brief message: We apologise for any inconvenience that has been caused by the downtime.
The Government Gateway was launched in a blaze of publicity in March. The government's e-Envoy MrAndrew Pinder described it as a world first and said it would revolutionise the way citizens do business with government .