DMV Pictures Lost

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles continues playing catch-up issuing driver's licenses to thousands of people who could not get one for the last several days.

Now it appears the DMV is still missing 12,000 to 16,000 license pictures taken in the days leading up to the August 25th computer crash that hampered operations at the DMV and 25 other state agencies.

Once customer exclaimed, "It's amazing. I'm hoping they can retrieve it."

The DMV says it lost several thousand photo images when a hardware failure corrupted the data that stores all of DMV's photos.

Thursday Governor McDonnell said the Virginia Information Technologies Agency and contractor Northrop Grumman were doing everything possible to retrieve the lost information.

The DMV says it' i positive it has lost at least 4,000 images taken on the day of the crash.

The DMV says it will be in touch with those impacted customers so their photos can be retaken.

Some customers voiced concerns that their driving records might be compromised as well.

The DMV says that should not be a concern.

Spokesperson Melanie Stokes says, "The 12,000 to 16,000 images we can't find on that data base are just pictures...nobody's driving record was in that mix."

More than 250 DMV workers will work Sunday and Labor Day Monday helping customers inconvenienced by last week's computer problems.

Update: Thursday, September 2, 11:00PM

Governor Bob McDonnell says government contracting giant Northrop Grumman will pay for an independent study into a hardware failure that corrupted the computer data at 26 state agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Taxation. The governor, clearly annoyed by the system failure that shut down several state computer systems for over a week, said "It's going to take weeks or months, and maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars to get it done, but that's the starting point, you pay for it."

Northrop Grumman has a 2.4 billion dollar, 10 year contract with the Virginia Information Technologies Agency to operate the state's computer services.

It's still unclear how much money the system failure has cost the state. The computer outages kept people from getting their driver's licenses, paying taxes, and getting some welfare services. The failure also resulted in hours of overtime for state employees and contractors trying to fix the system and retrieve lost information since last Wednesday. VITA Commission Samuel Nixon says "A lot of people have been on/off 24 hours a day since that time."

DMV workers will also be working extra hours to accommodate the governor's request to continue DMV operations over the holiday weekend, Labor Day, and the following weekend. The DMV employs over 17 hundred full time staff, but the state agency hasn't said how many will work at the 14 designated branches on those extended days.

Aside from paying for the independent study, Northrop Grumman could also be financially liable for the entire monetary loss to the state. The governor pointed out that the state's contract with Grumman has been rewritten twice to guarantee specific liquidated damage clauses to protect the commonwealth in events caused by the failure of the Grumman.

Update: Thursday, September 2, 6:15PM

The DMV is back online and can now process your drivers licenses and photo ID's. VITA and Governor McDonnell are still looking into the cause of the outage.