Computer failure causes delays at 168 California DMV offices statewide
By Judy Lin, APFriday, January 22, 2010
Computers down at all 168 California DMV offices
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A systemwide computer failure at the California Department of Motor Vehicles caused several hours of delays at all 168 offices Thursday.
The offices remained open, but with computers unable to connect to the state’s network, DMV workers were forced to do everything by hand, such as processing driver’s licenses and registrations, DMV spokeswoman Jan Mendoza said.
“They’re collecting paperwork and processing it later,” Mendoza said while the computers were down.
DMV offices began experiencing problems connecting to the state’s network around 11 a.m. Offices started to connect back around 2 p.m.
The failure comes a day before DMV offices will close for a mandatory furlough day, meaning customers could have to wait even longer for service.
The office of the state Chief Information Officer, which is in charge of state information technology, blamed the outage on equipment failure at the state’s data center in Sacramento.
“It was a router switch that malfunctioned,” said spokesman Bill Maile. “Network traffic was rerouted and the system is back up and running.”
It wasn’t clear how long customers were being delayed because of the failure.
Maile said no other state agencies were impacted, contrary to initial reports that other offices were affected by the outage.
