Oklahoma officials say a software bug is to blame for a network outage that plagued state agencies and forced some to shut down for hours.
The outage affected agencies from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 12, and for one hour during the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 13, said Christa Helfrey, a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Enterprise Services.
Helfrey said in an email the bug has since been fixed. She did not say what software was affected or how many state agencies experienced the outage, though reports of issues were widespread.
Several state agencies temporarily closed their offices to the public, delayed services or altered operations because of the outage.
Service Oklahoma said the outage affected its offices, website and call center, including its driver’s license services for most of the day Tuesday, as well as Wednesday morning. Officials at the Oklahoma Department of Labor and the Ethics Commission both said early Tuesday afternoon that their offices were closing for the day because of the outage.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission said the outage prevented it from posting the scheduled Wednesday meeting agenda online. Oklahoma law requires agendas to be posted at least 24 hours before public meetings. In an email, the agency noted the agenda was instead “posted prominently and publicly at the principal offices” of the Corporation Commission.
Previous Coverage: Internet outage hits Oklahoma state agencies: What we know so far
Mike Sanders, the chief executive officer of the Oklahoma Broadband Office, said Tuesday afternoon that employees at his agency “had to work from home.”
Leslie Berger, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma attorney general’s office, said many employees were working from home because of the “connectivity issues.”
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma agencies lost services for hours due to ‘software bug’
