UPDATED 4:07 p.m.
PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — A South Dakota state official told KELOLAND News a hardware failure was the cause for multiple state operated websites to crash for extended periods of time on Thursday.
Bureau of Information and Telecommunications Commissioner Jeff Clines said the “hardware failure” with one data server “brought down a cluster of other servers.”
He said the state had to bring each server back up one-by-one and teams were still working and reviewing the issue late Thursday afternoon.
Clines did not have exact numbers on how many state websites were impacted or for how long but did say state data was safe and secure.
The outage impacted the Department of Health’s COVID-19 website, where daily test result information and data is shared.
Other state websites, such as the Game, Fish and Parks website and Boards and Commissions website were also down.
2:02 p.m.
Shortly before 2 p.m. Thursday, South Dakota’s coronavirus website — COVID.SD.GOV — returned back online after being down for multiple hours.
Other state websites, such as the Game, Fish and Parks website and Boards and Commissions website were also down for periods of time Thursday.
KELOLAND News has reached out to the state’s Bureau of Information and Telecommunications for more information on what caused the website, which reports daily COVID-19 updates around the state, to be down.
11:41 a.m.
For more than an hour Thursday morning, South Dakota’s Department of Health COVID-19 website has been down.
A screen stating “The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred” loads when trying to load the website.
In a tweet, the DOH said a team is working to fix the problem and the latest COVID-19 update will be posted as soon as possible.
