Erie County Auto Bureaus shuttered by global tech outage

A tough day on Friday if you needed to do any business at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The global tech outage shuttered a number of the DMV services for its customers.

The DMV’s were open, but transactions were not possible.

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I checked out the situation at the Erie County Auto Bureau in Cheektowaga off George Urban Boulevard.

“We’ve been unable to process any transactions since 7' o'clock this morning when our first office opened,” explained Madonna Bishop, deputy clerk, Erie County Auto Bureau, Cheektowaga.

Across New York State and right here in Erie County, local auto bureaus were at a standstill due to the global tech outage.

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“From what we are being told with New York State IT there is a repair that has to be sent to each and every machine across New York State and not just New York State DMV, but other departments as well, so if they can't do that as a mass send out, they have to do individual machines, which could take some time, so we're at the mercy of the state,” described Bishop.

Unfortunately, even going to the DMV for a license renewal wasn’t possible on Friday.

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“Well, I need to renew my license and it's got to be done next week because I kind of procrastinated, so I came in trying to renew it and obviously I can do that,” replied Nicholas Griffo, customer.

Griffo of Williamsville tells me he knew about the outage but didn't think it would stall DMV operations.

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“Just crazy to think that other things are affected just by this outage,” declared Griffo.

Bishop tells me customers seemed to be very understanding.

“Most people seemed to be informed and they kind of come in and ask ‘Are you guys still down?' We've had a few that seemed as though they don't pay attention too much, that just had no clue, to be honest,” responded Bishop.

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The auto bureau leader does not have a timeline on when this issue will be resolved and hopes to return to normal operations on Saturday.

“We're hoping to be open tomorrow with our Saturday hours at Southgate and Eastern Hills Mall. I don't know how that's going to play out at this time. Even if we do open, we feel like it's going to be very busy and we may have to limit to just appointments,” reflected Bishop.

New York's Chief Cyber Officer and a former FBI agent who is now a cyber expert joined Voices on Friday to discuss the outage. You can watch the full conversation below.