Several agencies crippled by statewide network outage stretching into Friday morning

Several agencies crippled by statewide network outage stretching into Friday morning
May 19, 2023 10:34 AM in NewsSource: WBRZBy: WBRZ Staff Share:
UPDATE: According to the Louisiana Department of Administration, most of the systems are back online following Thursday's failure. However, the Office of Motor Vehicles is still experiencing issues.

All OMV offices will be closed until Monday, May 22.

BATON ROUGE - Multiple state offices are experiencing issues across Louisiana due to a network outage that was scheduled to be fixed Thursday evening.

The Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles, Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries were among the agencies affected. The outage was expected to last all day Thursday, but it stretched into Friday morning.

While systems were reportedly starting to come back online Friday, problems still remained.

People who needed to use the OMV on Thursday were out of luck.

"They told me the entire state system is down, that no OMV is going to be able to do anything right now," said Sophie Hyde, who has turned around at the door.



The issue — a hardware failure — according to the Department of Administration.

"It's been a bit of a challenge to try and even do anything today," Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis said.

The PSC was unable to do what they are elected to do: address citizen complaints about various public services.

"We have not been able to use our emails so I haven't been able to communicate with my constituents, make sure that we are following up about complaints about utility outages, getting important information or access to documents... so it has been a challenging day to kind of continue to provide the services needed to represent the people that I do."

At the East Baton Rouge District Attorney's office, important lab results from State Police and rap sheets for criminals were inaccessible.

"I mean I think this is why we have to take investments in technology seriously. This has crippled state government. These are lifesaving services that are now at risk because people can't use or get in touch with government. So I think we have to take this very seriously to make sure this never happens again."