Anyone planning on using GNWT services this weekend should aim to do so prior to Saturday night as the GWNT will be upgrading its network hardware overnight into Sunday morning.
The upgrades will be taking place starting May 15th at 10:30 p.m. and ending May 16th at 7:00 a.m.
GNWT phones, websites and emails will not be accessible during this time, but cellular services will remain unaffected.
The Inuvik Hospital and 8-1-1 will be functional through backup systems.
The primary switchboard number for Stanton Territorial Hospital will remain active, but direct lines to specific units will be inactive during the upgrade.
During this period there will be two short periods lasting a few minutes each when NWT 9-1-1 may experience some diminished capacity.
In order to mitigate any service impacts to the public, NWT 9-1-1 has increased the number of staff working during this period and will be monitoring 9-1-1 systems throughout the changeover process.
The GNWT says that backup plans have been established for other critical services.
GNWT social media sites will not be affected during this time as updates on the flood situations and new COVID-19 updates can be found on the GNWT Facebook page.
The GNWT says non-peak web traffic hours were deliberately chosen to cause the least disruption to the public.
They are expected to be fully operational by Sunday morning.
