BATON ROUGE – State workers were given a reprieve Thursday from the ongoing efforts to restore government networks crippled by hackers nearly two weeks ago.

Employees spent Thanksgiving at home but some will report back to state offices Friday.

The Division of Administration said its technical team that’s spent the ten days leading up to Thursday’s holiday working to restore systems had the day off but would return Friday and Saturday and Sunday.

The Office of Motor Vehicles also gave technical employees off Thursday but a skeleton crew will be at work Friday, officials told WBRZ.

Many state services and computer systems have been offline, unavailable or working only sporadically since ransomware was accidentally downloaded onto a state computer November 18.

The hack was especially problematic for the most public-facing state agency, the OMV, which could only open about two-dozen offices this week and was asking people to limit visits to non-critical driver’s license needs.

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