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 acc

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