Erie County Clerk says county's auto bureau systems are back online, but DMV walk-ins please be patient

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - According to Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns, all systems of the Erie County Auto Bureau are now back online as of Sunday morning following the global tech outages commencing late Thursday night.

"I'm pleased to inform the residents that the services we provide through the Erie County Clerk's office in all of our auto bureau branches are fully operational, and will be open for normal business hours," said County Clerk Kearns in a press conference on Monday.

All of the county's DMV offices were closed on Saturday as county employees worked through the weekend to get systems back online, Kearns noting that because the county was authorized to utilize "Self Prepare" protocols, a state representative didn't have to come to the county to take care of all the computer systems single-handedly, saving the auto bureau time for residents.

"Normally, you would have to have someone from New York State go to over 100 computers at all of our operations but because we worked a work around with New York State, our team was able to have time to work on these technical difficulties."

The cause of these large worldwide disruptions is said to have occurred due to an update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that provides software to a multitude of companies across the world.

Clerk Kearns now asking residents to give the county's auto bureau a few days to settle in as they make up thousands of appointments and transactions and understand that scheduled appointments will be prioritized over walk-ins.

"If you need something done today, yes, we will accommodate you, even our walk-ins. But I will say that if you do normally not have an appointment and you are walking in, it may take a little bit more time. If you go to erie.gov/clerk , you'll see the appointments. Once again, we have Saturday hours, and we know that we'll be working closely with their other partners and other county clerks to get things done."

Madonna Bishop, Erie County Auto Bureau Deputy Clerk notes that average wait times for walk-ins is about 45 minutes, Kearns notes they are consider adding more hours to accommodate.