Learn Dutch: Het systeem is tijdelijk afgesloten wegens een storing. - The system is temporarily shut down due to a malfunction.

Both wegens and vanwege mean "due to" or "because of" and can usually be used interchangeably. However, wegens is slightly more formal. It is the standard choice for official announcements, such as technical outages, traffic reports, or train delays.

Can I put 'wegens een storing' at the beginning of the sentence?

Yes, you can! If you want to emphasize the reason for the shutdown, you can move the phrase to the front. Just remember that doing so triggers inversion, meaning the verb must come before the subject: Wegens een storing is het systeem tijdelijk afgesloten.

What is the grammar behind 'is ... afgesloten'?

This is a passive construction describing a state. The verb afsluiten (to shut down / to close) is a separable verb, and its past participle is afgesloten. Because the system isn't doing the action itself, we use the auxiliary verb zijn (conjugated here as is) to show its current status: it "is shut down".

I know the verb 'storen' means 'to disturb'. How does that relate to 'een storing'?

Een storing literally means "a disturbance", but in modern everyday Dutch, it is the standard word for a technical "malfunction", "glitch", or "outage". You will see and hear this word constantly in the Netherlands when dealing with internet issues or public transport delays.