Five days after a systematic shutdown of Virginia's centralized computers, the Department of Motor Vehicles is still not operational, forcing police stations around the state to grant amnesty to motorists pulled over with expired driver's licenses.

And it's no sure bet that the outage will end anytime soon.

Gov. Bob McDonnell has called for an independent third party investigation into the computer outage that affected nearly 30 state agencies, including whether contractor Northrop Grumman should reimburse the state for lost business and productivity.

Not only are Virginians unable to get a driver's license, they also cannot file tax returns or make payments.

Virginia State Police won't be ticketing people who were unable to renew their licenses since last Wednesday because of the computer outage, spokeswoman Corinne Geller said in a statement.

Geller told FoxNews.com that the agency was unable to determine how many motorists benefited from the amnesty. She said the amnesty period could be extended if the outage isn't fixed Tuesday.

The Virginia Information Technologies Agency has been working since last Wednesday to fix the computer outage. As of Tuesday, computer problems continued to affect the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Taxation and the State Board of Elections. Other agencies also were experiencing minor issues relating to the failure at VITA's large suburban Richmond computing center, one of several data storage systems in different parts of Virginia.

Teams are working tirelessly to restore all the affected agencies to a fully operational status and have made significant progress, Virginia's Secretary of Technology Jim Duffey said in a statement. Duffey asked for "continued understanding and patience of state employees and citizens as this work continues."

The outage has left people unable to get or renew driver's licenses or identification cards at the DMV's 74 customer service centers. About 5,000 license or ID cards expired as of Monday without being able to be renewed, spokesman Melanie Stokes said.

At the state tax department, the outage prevented taxpayers from filing tax returns and making payments. But any filings or payments that are late because of the computer problems will not be assessed penalties or interest, the agency said on its website.

The State Board of Elections' voter registration database was unavailable due to the outage, said Susan Pollard, a spokeswoman for the agency.

VITA and its corporate partner, Northrop Grumman, have been criticized in scathing reports from the General Assembly's investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, for cost overruns, service outages, slow service and delays that have paralyzed state agencies numerous times since the agency was established in 2003.

VITA's 10-year, $2.4 billion contract with the government contracting giant is the largest in Virginia history with a single vendor.

Northrop said it will conduct its own investigation into the outage.

"We cannot afford to let any vulnerability in the infrastructure go unresolved," spokeswoman Christy Whitman said in a written statement to FoxNews.com. "We will conduct a root cause analysis, carefully analyze and review the findings, develop lessons learned and make necessary changes."

The company said it supports McConnell's call for an investigation.

"Our commitment to this partnership is absolute and we are dedicated to making the Commonwealth's information technology infrastructure the very best of its kind," she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.