All government services affected by Shaw Court fire now fully restored

Motor vehicle registry and land titles system available to Albertans

Motor vehicle registry and land titles services are now fully restored and available to Albertans following the disruption caused by a fire in Calgary’s Shaw Court Centre.

The July 11 fire caused the outage of a data centre supporting several provincial government services and applications. Most services were restored by July 13, but the motor vehicle registry and land titles data required more time to restore and test to ensure the integrated systems were stable and functioning properly. Now that all the systems are restored, government will take the time to internally assess what happened and make improvements if necessary.

Government put in place several temporary provisions during the outage to lessen the impact on Albertans. Drivers with licences that expired on or after July 1, 2012 were granted an extension. This extension remains in place until July 31, 2012 to allow time for Albertans to come in to a registry agent and renew their driver’s licences. Albertans who bought a vehicle and needed a licence plate were allowed to use In-transit Permits during the interim. These special 14 day permits will no longer be issued now that the motor vehicle system is operational but remain valid until the expiry date on the permit.


“I know this has been a frustrating inconvenience for many Albertans. I appreciate their patience and understanding while teams from the government and IBM worked around the clock to get services back up and running,” said Service Alberta Minister Manmeet Bhullar. “During the outage our first priority was restoring service and on providing ways to minimize the impact on Albertans. Now we are focusing on what we can learn from this situation to improve our systems going forward.”