Kathmandu, May 5 -- The first working day of the week turned out to be an unusually busy one for the National Information Technology Centre after almost all government websites became inaccessible early Sunday morning.

The centre, which falls under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and hosts all government websites, initially said the sites would be up and running almost immediately, but the error message on the sites remained for more than six hours.

Shree Chandra Sah, director of the Department of Transporta Management, was among the several government officials who called the centre more than once on Sunday to report the issue. The department's driving licence application system, one of the handful of services ...