Driver’s license services go down statewide in Kansas due to ‘ongoing global IT issues’

TOPEKA ( KSNT ) – Kansas state officials are reporting statewide IT issues amid more widespread global problems impacting a variety of services.

The Kansas Department of Revenue (KDOR) announced in a social media post Friday, July 19 that all Kansas driver’s license offices are being forced to close for the duration of the day. This is being attributed to “ongoing global IT issues.”

The KDOR said the CDL/DL help desk will remain open and CDL skills tests scheduled Friday will continue. Other Kansas agencies, such as Kansas Courts and law enforcement organizations, are also being impacted by these outages.

Allie Denning with the Kansas Office of Information Technology Services issued a press release on July 19 regarding issues associated with the outage. She said a cybersecurity incident is not responsible for the issues being experience and there is no threat to life safety services.

“The State of Kansas, like businesses and government entities around the globe, has had a handful of systems and servers that have been impacted by the CrowdStrike software update that is at the root of these outages,” Denning said. “The Office of Information Technology Services has identified a solution and is working with vendor partners and agencies to resolve the issue and return these systems to normal operations as quickly as possible.”

Denning said the vendor partner CrowdStrike applied an update late on Thursday, July 18 and into the early morning hours on Friday which impacted Kansas Executive Branch servers and computers. CrowdStrike has applied fixes and is working with OITS to fix any remaining problems. No estimated time for each service’s restoration can be given at this time with more information to be released in the near future as the situation develops.

The cause of the global tech outage comes from a software update which has disrupted services in air travel, health care, shipping and more worldwide, according to a report from the The Associated Press. The update was issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike which impacted people using Microsoft Windows. This caused many flights around the world to be grounded and prevented some local TV stations from broadcasting Friday.

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