Some Department of Motor Vehicle centers will be open on Sunday and Labor Day to ease a backlog of license and identification applications that accumulated while state computer servers were down for days.
The DMV center in Woodbridge will be open, but the center in Spotsylvania near Massaponax will not.
The server failure of more than a week ago affected 26 state agencies, but the one consumers noticed most was the DMV. No license or ID that required a photo could be processed for a week.
The DMV resumed processing licenses and IDs on Thursday.
Gov. Bob McDonnell, who called the computer failure "unacceptable," asked the DMV to extend hours Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and announced Thursday that some of the agency's customer service centers will also open Sunday and Labor Day. Besides the Woodbridge center, the Broad Street location in Richmond will be open. (For a full list online, go to dmvnow.com.)
"Like all Virginians, I am displeased by the recent computer troubles that have led to this situation," McDonnell said in a statement. "I have directed all impacted state agencies to take all actions necessary to return to normal operating conditions and to ensure that their citizen clients receive the service and assistance they deserve."
Several thousand Virginians saw their driver's licenses expire while the computer problem persisted. Normally, renewing an expired license requires the driver to prove his or her legal status by bringing in a birth certificate, passport or other document.
But the DMV has extended the validity of licenses that expired during the server problem. As long as the licenses are renewed by Sept. 20, those drivers won't have to prove legal presence.
McDonnell also said yesterday that he, in cooperation with the Virginia Information Technologies Agency and the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, will choose an independent vendor to review the failure of the computer servers. They are maintained by Northrop Grumman through a contract with the state, and McDonnell said Northrop Grumman will pay for the review.
In a release, McDonnell said he has spoken to Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush about the issue.
"I expressed to him that extended lapses in state computer services was an unacceptable hardship on our citizens and employees," McDonnell said. "I made clear that I expected the best around-the-clock recovery efforts possible in order to reclaim and restore all missing files and data."
In a written release, the president of Northrop Grumman Information Systems, Linda Mills, said the company "deeply regrets the disruption and inconvenience this has caused state agencies and Virginia citizens." She pledged that the company will figure out what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again.
Chelyen Davis: 540/368-5028
Email: cdavis@freelancestar.com