Overview
- Two prefectural driving-license centers experienced IT failures that forced temporary suspensions or slowdowns in issuing and renewing licenses, affecting roughly 330 people in total.
- The Hiroshima center reported repeated system interruptions that halted renewal work and were later restored after about two hours.
- The Niigata center stopped license issuance after a systems malfunction, which also caused major delays at its Nagaoka and Sado branch offices before intake resumed later in the day.
- Both centers and the Niigata prefectural police are investigating the root cause and have not yet identified why the systems failed.
- Officials say the incidents underscore how dependent license issuance is on central IT systems and that announced fixes and procedural reviews will aim to reduce the risk of similar service outages for users.