DPS system outages cause long delays

Oklahomans say they’re being turned away or forced to wait after DPS system outages

by: Peyton Yager

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Several Oklahomans – who have waited months for their appointment at a DPS location or a tag agency – say they’re showing up to learn the system has crashed.

The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety says a big problem at first was moving all of the old data over to the new system. Now, officials confirm major outages in the server are causing locations to slow down.

At the top of Ted Deboard’s list is renewing his driver’s license. KFOR spoke to Ted while he was waiting for hours in the cold at one of the only walk-in tag agencies in the metro.

“They are telling us the computers are shut down,” Ted Deboard said. “It may not come back up or it may.”

On Monday, it was the same statewide slowdown but a different day for DPS.

Rachel Ellis tells KFOR she was finally able to inch her way to the front of the line in Chickasha after being turned away multiple times.

“Apparently they got a new computer system, so they only had two computers set up so fix it!” Rachel Ellis said.

“From like 7 to 9, it works great,” Department of Public Safety Public Information Officer, Sarah Stewart said. “Then around 9 a.m., when more people get on the system, we see the slowdowns.”

The Department of Public Safety admits they do not employ any IT technicians.

When a problem pops up, they’re forced to fall back on a separate state agency – the Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES) for help.

“Do I have a timeline on when it will get better? No,” Stewart said. “I can assure that we are working on it.”

OMES released this statement to KFOR:

OMES is partnering with the Department of Public Safety and state service providers, IDEMIA and Microsoft, to investigate the root cause of the D360 application errors. OMES is continuing to take steps in line with the recommendations of the vendors to identify possible factors and take corrective action as new variables are brought to light. We are offering our resources to assist IDEMIA and Microsoft in their efforts to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. OMES will continue to stay in close communication with DPS leadership on these system delays until resolved.

DPS confirms they’re working to extend its hours on some nights or some weekends.

KFOR asked DPS, if the system can’t handle the load now, how will it with the added hours? DPS replied to KFOR “the problems will be worked out in a timely manner.”