Yes, there is a difference in the two examples you gave, although it would have been nice if you had been more specific about what you meant. What I notice is that the first option the apology comes from the company and the people in it, and intended to imply they see it as their responsibility to fix things. The second would imply that Alice is personally to blame for the cancellation and taking responsibility. Either are technically possible, although the latter seems very unlikely to ever happen.

What I fail to see is what this has to do with the error messages. The example given was "Sorry, you do not have permission to access this feature. Please contact your administrator for assistance", which falls under the first form. This seems appropriate for a message representing a team of people who wrote the program, as well as the administrator. It also is quite representative of the apology style seen in such messages.