Fingers crossed - DMV computer system works as planned

By John Howell
Posted 7/19/17

By JOHN HOWELL Matthew Hajjar of West Warwick was smiling Tuesday morning. He was holding a sheet of paper, his learner's permit. Now he was ready to be handed the keys to the family car. His mother, Shannon, was also smiling, but she wasn't about to

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Fingers crossed - DMV computer system works as planned

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Matthew Hajjar of West Warwick was smiling Tuesday morning. He was holding a sheet of paper, his learner’s permit. Now he was ready to be handed the keys to the family car.

His mother, Shannon, was also smiling, but she wasn’t about to hand Matthew the keys, not in the parking lot to the DMV office in Cranston. She was smiling for a different reason.

“We were in and out in 20 minutes. I’m stunned. God is really looking down on us,” she said.

In fairness, the Hajjars’ experience wasn’t the norm as the DMV resumed its full schedule after a nine-day conversion to a $20 million new computer program Tuesday morning. The Hajjars visited the offices on Monday and completed the paperwork, so they breezed through Tuesday.

But the lines weren’t long and the waits no longer than usual – maybe even a bit shorter – discovered Lynette Souza of Warwick. She visited the office to renew a commercial driving license.

“It went really, really quick,” she said.

Souza anticipated a five-hour ordeal, especially after conversion to the new computer program, but was out in less than 90 minutes. She had suddenly found an extra couple of hours in her day and she was delighted.

If it all sounds too good to believe, maybe it isn’t.

DMV director Walter “Bud” Craddock wasn’t making any predictions. He wasn’t going to jinx things, however, he agreed after all the planning, training and preparations, the first day of full operations was running smoothly.

Craddock said the new system has “met our expectations,” adding, “I’m cautiously optimistic.” He was highly complimentary of the 176 DMV staff, who he said have “bought into” the system and using it. Training for the staff, depending on their position, varied from a day to four days with an additional couple of days of practice training. Training started about six weeks ago and included an additional 130 staff from AAA Northeast as well as online automobile dealers.

Customer service representative Rosa Marin of Johnston was one of those working Tuesday morning. In a break, as the next person found her window, Marin said she found the system easy to work with. As a woman seeking to renew her license appeared before her, Marin called up the woman’s information, including her photograph on her screen. Under the old system, dating back to the 1980s, there was no photo and the representative was required to type in every line of information. With a click from her mouse – the old system was not operated by a mouse – information completed the form.

DMV spokesman Paul Grimaldi is hopeful the new system will shave off minutes from the prior average transaction period of 11.5 minutes. It’s too early to tell whether that will be the case, although preliminary reports are pointing in that direction. According to Grimaldi’s calculations, if the Cranston office, which processes 17,000 transactions monthly, could shave a minute off of each of those transactions it would add up to 283 hours in reduced waits.

Craddock remains mystified why so many people insist on visiting the DMV when they could accomplish the same thing without the aggravation online or by mail. He said all registration renewables can be done online or by mail, yet 100,000 registrations, about 10 percent of the state’s total, are done over the counter.

Craddock was pleased by the response to the reservation system implemented to ease the transition to the new system. He said it proved effective and it is “something we’re going to explore” going forward.

“It was positively received,” he said, suggesting a hybrid form of reservation may be in the offing.

Craddock is targeting a 45-minute to hour-long period from the point someone walks in the door until the transaction is completed and they walk out in a “reasonable period of time.”

Getting this far has been a nine-year process involving the rewriting of more than 2 million lines of computer code. By today’s standards, the technology is already outdated (it is not cloud-based) but, by the same token, it is years ahead of where it was and can be changed.

As part of the transition, the DMV gained legislative approval to extend the expiration dates of licenses and registrations. All licenses and registrations expiring in July have been extended to Sept. 30, a move that has required the division to notify not only local law enforcement but other states and the Transportation Security Administration.

Grimaldi, along with Craddock and other administrators, were breathing somewhat easier Tuesday.

“If this thing collapsed the state would have crashed for the summer,” said Grimaldi.

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