AFIS weekend availability will vary for the following reasons:

• Many ad-hoc and fiscal year-end system jobs and updates require the system to be down and take several hours to run. The GAO uses weekends to run these jobs and cannot estimate how long they will take or when the system will be available again.  
• The batch cycles on Friday and Saturday nights include long-running jobs that cause the system to be unavailable until mid-day (and sometimes later) on Saturdays and Sundays.
• CGI performs technical maintenance once a month (generally the third weekend) that begins on Saturday at 3pm and often lasts until late Sunday.

Because of the reasons listed above, there is never a guarantee that AFIS will or will not be available on the weekends, so agencies should plan accordingly. The GAO will make every attempt during fiscal year-end to plan for some weekend availability. Once that is scheduled, a web story will be published.

If you have any questions, please contact your AFIS liaison.