Unknown system outage impacts vehicle licensing offices across Washington state

Vehicle licensing systems at the Washington State Department of Licensing went down across the state on Thursday afternoon.

An agency spokesperson told GeekWire via email that its systems started having issues before 2:30 p.m. PT. The agency was working on restoring access and did not yet know what caused the outage.

At an auto and vessel licensing facility in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, a makeshift sign attached to a sandwich board for the office read in part, “Sorry for the inconvenience. All systems in WA State are down and we have no ETA.”

The DOL handles everything from driver’s licenses to vehicle registrations and tabs to license plates and much more. Thursday’s incident only impacted vehicle licensing, according to the spokesperson.