On July 24, 2014, the Department of State (DOS) announced that their Consular Consolidated Database (CCD), which supports worldwide visa and passport verification and processing, is currently experiencing significant technical problems. DOS confirmed that the issue is worldwide and not specific to any particular country, citizenship document, or visa category.
Related reports from various media outlets have confirmed that the global database for issuing travel documents has in fact crashed, resulting in major delays in visa processing. Marie Harf, a spokeswoman of DOS, stated that the system issues have resulted in "significant performance issues, including outages" since Saturday affecting applications for passports, visas and reports of Americans born abroad. Ms. Harf reported that the problems with the database have resulted in an "extensive backlog" of applications, which has, in turn, hampered efforts to fix the system.
The affected database is DOS’ system of record used to approve, record and print visas and other documents to ensure that national security checks are conducted on applicants. Until the database is restored and functional, U.S. citizens and foreign nationals abroad requiring certain consular benefits may face significant delays.
