‘They are incompetent.’ Republican blasts latest DMV outage

Thousands of customers walked into the California Department of Motor Vehicles on Thursday unable to have their transactions processed.

The embattled agency confirmed 68 offices experienced connectivity problems due to “an issue with a router.”

Cullen Grant, manager at a Los Angeles DMV field office, said he was unable to even log onto his email because network connectivity was unavailable.

“I couldn’t even log on to check my email into the system, let alone a technician being able to process a transaction,” Grant said. “The only thing available (for customers at field offices) was a driver’s test and self-service terminal.”

Grant said the systems started to come back up after about two and a half hours. The DMV confirmed power was restored around 10:45 a.m.

“The DMV worked with the vendor to fix a router issue that was affecting some field offices,” said Jessica Gonzalez, a DMV spokeswoman. “It was not a statewide outage. The affected offices are now processing customer transactions. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

The DMV has a history of technology issues causing customer delays. Between January 2017 and mid-August 2018, the DMV experienced 34 IT outages, including six statewide office system outages. Outages ranged anywhere from 15 minutes to nine hours.

Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, has been a vocal critic of the department and said he will “continue to be a thorn in the flesh of the DMV” until a comprehensive audit is approved by the Legislature. With Democrats’ help, the DMV narrowly dodged an audit last month.

“This is another example that the DMV simply cannot be trusted to fix the problems that they have created. … They are incompetent,” Patterson said.

This story was originally published September 20, 2018 at 11:04 AM.