Service Resumes At Michigan Secretary Of State Branches

LANSING (WWJ) - The computers are back online at all Michigan secretary of state branch offices.

The Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget (DTMB) has resolved a computer outage that impacted state government operations for more than 24 hours.  The 131 Secretary of State branch offices across the state are now able to complete business transactions for citizens, and internal processes at other state agencies impacted by the outage are now fully functional.

According to a statement from the SOS office, the process of removing corrupted files and doing the careful restoration work was completed shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday.  Technicians will continue to work through the night to monitor applications housed on the impacted mainframe.

"I'm happy to report that it will be business as usual for state agencies tomorrow," said David Behen, CIO for the State of Michigan and DTMB.  "I'd like to thank the many DTMB employees and our vendor partners who worked so hard to get this fixed, and I thank our state agency partners who hung in there with us as we worked to get them up and running."

Earlier Thursday, Michigan secretary of state spokesman Randall Thompson said  "We have also alerted law enforcement authorities that customers have been unable to renew tabs and driver's licenses."

Thompson said SOS officials may extend branch office hours at their busiest offices during the week and possibly extend Saturday hours to assist customers. "A lot will depend on when the state can restore the system," he said.

Thompson said customers were given return passes that will help them avoid lines once the system is restored, adding that the department handles 80,000 transactions a day.

He said late fees resulting from the outage would be waived for the day.

Talking with WWJ's Sandra McNeil, many of those who were turned away at the Southfield branch were frustrated and angry.  Eve Pitts of Detroit said she has been trying to renew her license tags since Wednesday.

"These people are in here just sitting around and doing nothing. They're saying the state is broke, the city of Detroit is broke, but yet... they are paying these people to sit around and do nothing all day long," Pitts said.

"I asked them, 'are you going to stay open later for those of us who have been trying for two days?' But, oh no, they're going to close at five o'clock," she said,

At least one man was taking it all in stride.

"There were real nice in there. You know, so it seemed like they wished they could be working," he said.