Department of Drivers Services outage causes statewide shutdown

ATLANTA — Georgia Department of Driver's Services shut down statewide on Friday after a computer outage, officials said.

The outage, caused by an issue with the computer vendor, left many people unable to get a license or a permit or do other business with the agency.

Channel 2's Rikki Klaus visited DDS offices in Decatur and Norcross, where dozens of frustrated people waited in line Friday -- some for hours.

DDS Centers Open Tomorrow:

Multilingual interpreter Irakli Samkharadze said he comes to the DDS offices in Norcross with clients at least once a week. On Friday, he was waiting for his own license to come in the mail.

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"I'm going out of town on Monday, so that means I probably won’t have my license if their system is down today," Samkharadze said. "That means I would have to reschedule my flight. Oh, this is horrible.”

Angel Rocca told Klaus she needed her license renewed by Friday afternoon for her new job at IHOP.

"I had to have it by 3 p.m. today so I came here and I rushed," Rocca said. "I'm going to lose my job over this. You can't work with an expired ID."

16-year-old Kimberly Lopez had been waiting for hours to get her driver's permit in hopes of having it before she goes back to school on Tuesday.

"I was like, we just came all this way to wait?" Lopez said.

The DDS originally said the issue would not be resolved until Tuesday. But by Friday afternoon, the agency announced 41 service centers will operate on Saturday and 45 will be open Monday. There are a total of 67 centers across Georgia.

In a statement, the software vendor said no one's personal data was compromised.

The DDS said the last time the system was fully down was in 2013.

Cox Media Group