Colombian passport systems hit
A suspected cyberattack disrupted passport services across Medellín, Bogotá, Cali and Bucaramanga by knocking out Colombia’s SITAC platform, affecting online passport issuance and apostille services and causing local delays (hendryadrian.com). If you have travel or paperwork tied to Colombia in the short term, expect slower turnaround for documents and consider embassy or in‑person alternatives while authorities work to restore systems (hendryadrian.com).
People in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, and Bucaramanga showed up for passport appointments this week and found counters slowed or suspended after Colombia’s Foreign Ministry said its central citizen-services platform, the Sistema Integral de Trámites al Ciudadano, had suffered major failures starting April 7. The ministry said on April 8 that it had begun a “deep technical intervention” in the platform instead of giving a firm restart date. (cancilleria.gov.co, elpais.com.co) This was not just a website glitch. The Sistema Integral de Trámites al Ciudadano is the Foreign Ministry’s digital front desk for passport applications, apostilles, visas, consular records, naturalizations, and online appointments, so when it goes down, the line outside the office is only the visible part of the problem. (eltiempo.com, cancilleria.gov.co) The ministry’s own passport page shows how dependent the process is on that system. In Colombia, Bogotá appointments are booked online through the Foreign Ministry, and abroad, Colombian consulates are the only offices allowed to issue or renew passports. (cancilleria.gov.co, cancilleria.gov.co) Apostilles were hit too, which matters far beyond tourism. Colombia’s apostille and legalization service is designed to run fully online, 24 hours a day, for documents like birth records, education papers, and criminal-record certificates that people use for jobs, visas, marriages, and studies abroad. (cancilleria.gov.co, cancilleria.gov.co) The disruption spread outside Colombia because the same platform also supports consular work overseas. Colombian media reported interruptions in cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Miami, Orlando, and New York, which turned a domestic technology failure into a problem for Colombians abroad as well. (elpais.com.co, eltiempo.com) One detail made the outage more confusing: the ministry said passport delivery could continue even while new applications and online services were disrupted. That means the physical passport booklet and the digital system behind scheduling, identity capture, and approvals are linked but not identical. (eltiempo.com) The timing is awkward because Colombia is already in the middle of a broader passport transition. Caracol reported that the current stock linked to contractor Thomas Greg and Sons runs through April 30, while the government has been promoting a new passport model centered on tighter state control over citizen data. (caracol.com.co, cancilleria.gov.co) Officials have been careful with their wording. The Foreign Ministry publicly described the event as technical “intermittencies” and urged people to trust only official passport information from the ministry, while outside reporting described a suspected cyberattack behind the outage. (cancilleria.gov.co, cancilleria.gov.co, hendryadrian.com) For anyone with a flight, visa deadline, or foreign paperwork tied to Colombia in the next few days, the practical picture is simple. Online passport steps, apostilles, and some consular services can bottleneck at the same point, so the safest move is to check the Foreign Ministry or your consulate before traveling to an office and be ready for in-person workarounds where they are offered. (cancilleria.gov.co, cancilleria.gov.co, cancilleria.gov.co)
