Multiple states reported disrupted services at department of motor vehicles offices Thursday in a "national outage" that halted license-related transactions due to "a loss in cloud connectivity."
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a nongovernmental group that provides software to DMV offices, said Thursday: “The network that connects motor vehicle agencies across the United States to each other and to various verification services experienced an outage due to a loss in cloud connectivity.”
The outage lasted from 9:50 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET, AAMVA spokesperson Claire Jeffrey said.
"During that time, there was no ability to process messages that support transactions of driver licenses and motor vehicle titles. This prevented a number of motor vehicle agencies from issuing driver licenses and vehicle titles during the outage," Jeffrey said.
The AAMVA said connectivity was restored to nearly all states as of 2 p.m. ET, noting “the outage had nothing to do with software — strictly connectivity.”
Jeffrey said the disruption was due to “a network-level outage within Microsoft’s data center infrastructure.”
A Microsoft spokesperson told NBC News the company doesn’t comment on specific customers but that some cloud services in Virginia “experienced a connectivity issue this morning,” which has since been resolved.
DMV offices across the country had issued warnings about the outage to locals on social media Thursday.
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias wrote on X that all driver's license facilities and DMVs in Illinois and “across the country” were down.
The Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles asked Coloradans with appointments at a state driver's license office to reschedule due to the outage, which they attributed to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
The outage affected most driver's license services, including online options, but not driver's license knowledge tests, permit tests or requests for motor vehicle records, Colorado's DMV said.
In a 2:53 p.m. ET update on X, the office said that "it is once again serving Coloradans after a technical issue that caused nationwide outages was successfully resolved" and that "[a]ll DMV services are now fully operational."
Massachusetts’ Registry of Motor Vehicles wrote on X that it “cannot process any license or ID related transactions at this time due to a national system outage.”
The outage was resolved by the afternoon, the Massachusetts RMV posted on X at 1:49 p.m. ET.
A banner alert on New York state’s DMV website Thursday said: “DMV transactions are currently unavailable due to a network outage. Please check back later.”
At 3:49 p.m. ET, it said on its X account that services had resumed in its offices and online.
Virginia’s DMV said its system was back up and running just before 1 p.m. “after a third-party system outage that affected driver’s license transactions at our offices and website.”