Michigan’s unemployment agency back up and running after global IT outage

(CBS DETROIT) – State departments were not spared from tech issues on Friday as Michigan and the rest of the country dealt with major disruptions from a global tech outage. 

Phone and online chat services are back online after being disrupted at Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency.

“Here at the state of Michigan, we do have some state services that were impacted mainly through third parties or hosted services,” said Laura Wotruba, the director of communications for the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget. “One of those would be call centers that people call into for various help with various state services and programs. And so those were down, but since then, traffic has been restored.”

According to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, there were a few hours on Friday morning when customers could not reach employees, but systems are beginning to return to normal. 

“All of our state agency call centers are once again able to handle customer calls, and we here at the Department of Technology, Management and Budget continue to monitor all of our systems, just given the nature of a widespread global IT outage,” Wotruba said. “We’re just being extra vigilant to make sure things are up and running as they are supposed to be.”

Wotruba says that calls that came in during the disruption were rerouted. Those who received an error message can call now that things are running more smoothly.