U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, sent Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman a request for information regarding reports of a recent outage at the Fed’s National Information Center (NIC), a key data platform that facilitates bank supervision, the discount window, and other Fed functions.

Warren also wrote to Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Travis Hill regarding the impact of bank examiner workforce cuts on the ability of their respective agencies to oversee banks’ technology-focused third-party service providers, including AI-related vendors.

The NIC Outage

“It is my understanding that around Wednesday, August 5, 2026, the NIC suffered an outage that lasted at least 48 hours,” Warren wrote. “It is important for Congress to understand the nature of this outage, its impact, if any, on the Fed’s critical functions, and how, if at all, your 30% staffing cuts in the Division of Supervision and Regulation affected the ability of Fed information technology (IT) staff to perform necessary maintenance of the NIC.”

Questions Sent to Vice Chair Bowman

Warren requested answers from Federal Reserve Vice Chair Bowman on the nature, impact, and causes of the alleged outage, asking the following:

  • Did this NIC outage occur? If so, when, and when was it resolved?
  • What caused the outage? Was it a previously known IT issue?
  • How did the Fed become aware of the outage, and what was the delay between the outage start time and when the Fed became aware of it?
  • What was the delay between the outage start time and when troubleshooting commenced?
  • Who was in charge of troubleshooting the NIC?
  • How were users of the NIC notified of the outage, and was there any delay in notifying them?
  • Did the Fed conduct any retrospectives on the incident? If so, please provide details.
  • Does the Fed have a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) defined for the NIC? If so, what is the defined RTO, and please provide a list of outages exceeding the defined RTO in the past two years, including how long they lasted and why they occurred.
  • What was the impact of the outage on the Fed’s bank supervision, discount window, and other functions?

Warren’s inquiry reflects broader congressional concern about whether recent workforce reductions at federal banking agencies have compromised the operational resilience and supervisory capacity of critical financial infrastructure.