The sheer number of connected items in our contemporary environment is frequently shocking; sadly, the revelation usually occurs after one of those links breaks. Our knowledge of the national network’s interconnection of state departments of motor vehicles came from an issue that brought the entire system down this morning.
There was a “national outage” that stopped licensing transactions in several states across the nation. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a private organization, provides the software these agencies share, and there was a breakdown.
The system was unavailable from 9:50 a.m. EDT to 12:30 p.m.; by 2 p.m., almost all states had resumed operations.
Now that everything is operational, the company is attempting to identify the underlying reason for the connectivity outage.
This impacted license transactions, such as any online renewals you tried. However, Colorado, for instance, and probably other states, may still administer written examinations for driver’s licenses and respond to records requests (NBC cited Colorado as one example).
