A technology outage has hobbled the state agency that manages Louisiana’s TOPS scholarship and college-savings programs, which could cause payment delays, the agency said Thursday.
The Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance, or LOSFA, is experiencing an “incident” that disrupted its information technology systems, according to a statement posted online and sent to the news media Thursday afternoon.
The agency administers the state’s TOPS college-scholarship program and its START program, a 529 education savings account program to help families save for college or private school tuition. As of Thursday afternoon, the START website and an online tool for students to track their TOPS scholarships were not working.
The outage could lead to delayed scholarship or savings account payments, according to the statement, which said the Louisiana State Police and other agencies are investigating the cause.
“While we continue the investigation, we have notified all institutions regarding potential delayed student START account or state scholarship payments,” the statement said. “We have asked institutions to extend payment deadlines to minimize any disruptions to education.”
The statement raised several unanswered questions, including whether the disruption was due to a cyberattack and whether students’ and families’ personal data was compromised. Agency staffers are analyzing the outage “to determine what, if any, information was involved in the incident,” the statement said.
A Board of Regents spokesperson said he could not answer follow-up questions.
The timing of the statement also raised questions. LOSFA began experiencing technical difficulties at least three days earlier, according to a Monday morning Facebook post. And for several days the agency’s website has said that staffers “are unable to answer phone calls, emails, or assist customers at this time.”
Some families have been alarmed by the extended outage.
Kayne Pierce, who put money in Louisiana’s START program to help pay for his children’s college costs, said he hasn’t been able to reach anyone at LOSFA or access the START website for several days.
“My concern is that there was a cyberattack or something like that,” he said. “For it to have been three days without any updates is very concerning.”