A screen at the Minnehaha County Courthouse that normally displays the daily court calendar sits blank on Aug. 20, 2025, the second day of disruptions to South Dakota’s state network. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
The loss of state government’s online and communications services for nearly two business days last week started with the failure of a data center core switch in Pierre, according to the office that maintains the network.
The problem with the switch at the state’s Capitol caused a power outage and chain reaction across the state “data center,” which is the term used by the Bureau of Information and Telecommunications to describe the hardware across South Dakota connected to its communications network.
Power outages across South Dakota government stymie services statewide
The disruption began on Tuesday.
During the outage, people were unable to get birth or death records, marriage licenses, vehicle registrations, driver’s licenses or license plates. The state court system declared a judicial emergency because electronic court records were inaccessible. Law enforcement was unable to run license plates for driver information during traffic stops for a portion of the outage.
Lisa Rahja, spokeswoman for the bureau, told South Dakota Searchlight in an email that the replacement switch was shipped to Pierre overnight Tuesday and installed Wednesday.
A data center core switch, Rahja said Monday, is “the high-capacity network backbone for all servers and systems located within the data center” that connects the rest of the network and routes data traffic.
Outage coincides with first meeting of infrastructure work group
Wednesday, the second day of the outage, marked the first meeting of the Governor’s Resilience and Infrastructure Task Force, a group led by Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen that’s tasked with studying the state’s physical and digital infrastructure with an eye to upgrades and improvements. The group’s meetings are not open to the public “due to the sensitive and secure nature” of the work, according to the Governor’s Office. The office also says the task force is a “working group,” and therefore not obligated to conduct its business in public under a subsection of the state’s open records law.
State network begins to come back online after second day of failures
Venhuizen, in an email to South Dakota Searchlight, said Thursday that the outage did not hamstring the group’s first meeting, but “it was a timely reminder of the many ways that critical infrastructure and systems can be disrupted.”
In his weekly column on Friday, Gov. Larry Rhoden emphasized that “the service disruption was the result of a power outage, not any kind of nefarious activity,” but said the situation shows why the group is needed.
“They exist as a strategic advisory body to assess risks and vulnerabilities and support long-term planning and investment in critical infrastructure,” Rhoden wrote.
Rhoden’s column also said that Bureau of Information and Telecommunications Commissioner Mark Wixon missed the first task force meeting to “oversee the response.” At one point, the governor wrote, there were concerns that the replacement part had missed its truck and was stuck in Sioux Falls, but “thankfully, that ended up not being the case.”
Lawmakers react, plan to question bureau
The outage and its impact will be part of discussions during the next Government Operations and Audit Committee meeting, Rapid City Republican Sen. Taffy Howard confirmed on Saturday. The committee’s task is to oversee the operations of state government for the legislative branch.
The bureau was already set to appear during the Sept. 24 meeting, said Howard, who is chairwoman of the committee, and will now be expected to explain the outage.
Rep. Marty Overweg, R-New Holland, is vice chairman of the committee.
“Everybody needs to know what happened, because we don’t,” Overweg said last week. “I’ve heard a lot of different things.”
He noted that the Bureau of Finance and Management is in the midst of a multi-year, $70 million upgrade of the state’s money management, procurement, employee expense and risk management software system. The project, which began in June of 2024 under the name “BISON,” was endorsed as a replacement for a software system so old it could no longer be serviced.
The outage is concerning, Overweg said, at a time when “we just spent millions of dollars on this whole new program.”
Rep. Erik Muckey, D-Sioux Falls, is a member of the budget committee. He said last week he’s concerned about the outage, and that he hopes it shows the importance of investing in infrastructure upfront. The notion that a component failure could have such a widespread impact, Muckey said, should have lawmakers asking why there wasn’t a backup plan.
“I’m concerned that we might not have an adequate plan for redundancy,” Muckey said. “This should not happen. If we expect to operate effectively, we should not be down for two days.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.