A public service incident is measured by its effect on people
A government portal is reachable, but applications are not being recorded after payment. The gold standard of incident triage assesses the full public impact rather than judging severity only by server uptime.
Identify the affected journey
Determine which steps fail: authentication, submission, payment, case creation or notification.
Assess consequence and urgency
Deadlines, financial effects, access barriers and safety implications may affect priority under approved procedures.
Distinguish isolated and systemic problems
A single unusual case may require case management, while widespread transaction failures may need incident response.
Assign technical and service ownership
Multiple systems may be involved. A coordinating owner should maintain visibility of affected users and resolution.
Protect evidence
Preserve appropriate logs, transaction identifiers and status records to support investigation and correction.
Communicate practical next steps
Explain what is known and whether users should wait, check status or use an authorised alternative. Avoid unsupported promises.
Break-test: payment succeeds but case creation fails for hundreds of users
Can the agency recognise the systemic pattern, prioritise affected cases and prevent duplicate submissions?
Connected knowledge
See Service Journey Failure Detection, Service Journey Observability and GovTech