State IT execs tight-lipped about system outages

State systems were down for much of Thursday, and came back in spurts Friday morning.

Posted 8:12 p.m. Oct 14, 2022 — Updated 8:48 p.m. Oct 14, 2022

Travis Fain

, WRAL state government reporter

Government computer systems went down Thursday at a wide range of state agencies, and the state's central Department of Information Technology provided little explanation.

Department spokeswoman Nicole Meister characterized the issue as "required system maintenance" that caused outages "across state agencies, Council of State offices and some local governments." She would not say whether the state suffered a ransomware or other attack, but at no point did Meister or the department describe the maintenance as planned or routine. The department announced the outages in a Tweet late Thursday morning.

Gov. Roy Cooper's office wouldn't provide further information Friday, with a spokeswoman parroting NCDIT's comments.

Most systems were back to normal this morning, the department said, though state workers saw delays because all the impacted accounts came back online at the same time.

Today is the last day to register to vote for people who want to vote on election day, Nov. 8. State Board of Elections spokesman Pat Gannon said the board was "unaware of any major impacts" on registration.

People can register to vote online through the state Division of Motor Vehicles until tonight at midnight, and those who miss the deadline can do same day registration at early voting sites across the state. Those early voting sites are open Oct. 20 to Nov. 5, and people can register and vote in the same visit.

A spokesman for the DMV said the online voter registration portal was not affected by the system outages.

The DMV did have issues with other systems, but spokesman Marty Homan described the impacts as "minimal." No DMV or license plate offices closed, he said, but this morning some couldn't complete all services due to an unrelated issue with a vendor's document scanning capture system. That issue has been resolved, Homan said.

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