A computer hardware problem was to blame for a glitch that shut down Alberta registry services across the province.
Full service was restored by Monday morning, but not before a lot of headaches were created for Albertans looking to renew their driver’s licences, access corporate registries and pay fines online.
“It was a hardware failure,” said Sharon Lopatka, spokeswoman for Service Alberta. “We should know more about what happened early next week and, hopefully, we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The system went down Thursday morning, affecting all 227 registry agencies.
Although vehicle registrations weren’t affected, the outage did affect a raft of other services, such as SPIN II (an information system used mainly by lawyers), land titles, personal property registry access, and vital statistics services, including marriage licences.
Fines could still be paid at a courthouse and Service Alberta notified police about the problem and suggested they use discretion if they pulled over someone with a driver’s licence that expired Thursday or Friday.
Driver’s licence renewal was available again by late Friday, along with vital statistics services.
On Saturday, online fine payments were back up.
Calgary registry agencies said they were swamped with customers Monday.
“We were very busy,” said Brandon Cho, manager of Macleod Trail Registries.
“We had a lot more customers and we had to do all of the outstanding work left from the date the system went down.”
Wendy Williams, a supervisor at a Registries Plus in northeast Calgary, said it started getting busy on Saturday, once word got out that some service were restored.
“We had a few upset customers, but what can you do?” said Williams. “We’re all back up now. We seem to be OK.”
Source:http://www.calgaryherald.com/Computer+hardware+blamed+glitch+that+shut+down+registry+services/5428280/story.html
