Louisiana state government offices are dealing with a network outage that so far has affected the Office of Motor Vehicles, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Department of Children and Family Services, and the Department of Health.
The impact of the outage is being felt across the state as people seeking renewals of licenses, car registration, SNAP benefits, Food Stamps, Child and Family Services are all at a standstill.
Word from the OMV says they have no estimated time when servers will come back up at this time.
This is not the first time the state has faced such an outage.
Governor John Bel Edwards had to issue a State of Emergency in November, 2019 following an attack on servers in a ransomware shakedown.
In that attack 10% of the state’s 5,000 computer networks went down and 1,600 desktop computers were damaged.
The OMV issued a statement on the outage:
There is no estimated time for restoration available," the agency said. "We understand the inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience and cooperation. We will provide regular updates on www.expresslane.org and OMV social media platforms.
DCFS also stated:
The email outage is affecting the operation of the DCFS Child Abuse/Neglect Hotline. Until the toll-free number returns to full operation, please make emergency reports to law enforcement. Mandatory reporters may still enter reports of abuse and/or neglect through the mandatory reporter portal at www.dcfs.la.gov/MandatedReporterPortal (http://www.dcfs.la.gov/MandatedReporterPortal).
Meanwhile the Department of Fisheries responded:
The LDWF computer network is down, including email and telephone systems. We apologize for the inconvenience. Our headquarters staff cannot answer phone calls or process boat registrations or licenses. The state Office of Technology Services is currently working on a resolution. Please wait to travel to LDWF headquarters for licensing and boat registration work until this problem is resolved.