Since 2006, Vermont has laid out more than $18 million for a Department of Motor Vehicles computer system that barely works.
The system was once touted as a state-of-the art solution. Instead, the state is largely relying on a 40-year system that lacks the ability to provide the immediacy needed in the world of driver records and auto registrations.
State officials said they are working to recoup the costs from the vendor, Hewlett Packard, the fourth company to hold the contract.
“We’ll try to get our money back starting with a settlement conversation, and if that’s not fruitful, the lawyers will take over,” said Rob Ide, state Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner. “We’re looking for a big check.”
“This is outrageous,” said Gov. Peter Shumlin, whose administration inherited the contract when he took office in 2011, but he was a member of the Senate Transportation Committee that oversees motor vehicle matters before becoming governor. “It’s unacceptable.”
Ide and Shumlin attribute the problem to the frequent change in vendors as each one is bought out by another.
Hewlett Packard officials contend the company expects to deliver a successful system
“HP is fully committed to the successful completion of the VT Drives project. The delay is unfortunate; however it is necessary to deliver a high-quality customized system and to implement additional changes as well as functionality that have been requested by the state,” Hewlett Packard spokeswoman Ericka Floyd said. “HP is fully focused on addressing the remaining technical issues, implementing the additional functionality requested and testing the application to bring the project to completion.”
Ide said the state considers the system that has been created to be fatally flawed, though a few of the new functions are working. “We do not believe the code as written will ever work as advertised,” he said.
Whether the state will recover its money or end up with a working computer system remains to be seen. The issue raises questions about the state’s antiquated computer network and its ability to keep pace with technology.
In the meantime, the Department of Motor Vehicles will maintain its old system, Ide said, with the worry that it could give out and leave the state without access to driver and auto registration records.
Though the system functions, Ide said, there are also consequences to its slowness. Recently, he said, a driver received new license plates on a Thursday, went to Montreal for the weekend and upon returning discovered at the border that the registration information hadn’t been updated in the computer.
The state signed a $10 million contract for a new Department of Motor Vehicles computer system in 2006 with Covansys Corp., the low bidder for a system that was dubbed VT DRIVES, or Vermont Driver and Registration Information and Verification Enterprise System.
In the ensuing six years, the state has spent another $8.5 million of staff time, consultants, hardware and software on the system, Ide said. The total comes to $18,553,047, he said, with the state’s last payment to Hewlett Packard in April 2011.
The state has also seen three more companies come through the door.
Covansys’ was bought out in short order and the contract was transferred to Saber Corp. in 2006, said Ellen Hemond of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Saber was then sold to Electronic Data Systems, which took over the contract in 2007.
EDS was bought out by Hewlett Packard in 2008, and the contract remained with EDS as a division of Hewlett Packard, but then in 2010, Hewlett Packard itself took over the contract, Hemond said.
Bonnie Rutledge, who retired in 2009, was commissioner of motor vehicles when the contract was signed in 2006. She recalled that the state was conscious of not being the lone guinea pig for a new system, and so contracted with a company that was working with other states.
Those states have had some of the same troubles with the vendors.
A 2011 article in the publication GoLocalProv reported, “Rhode Islanders have been paying millions of dollars for a new Department of Motor Vehicles computer system since 2007, but it has yet to even go on-line. ”
Revenue Director Rosemary Booth Gallogly said, “There were continuity issues (with the vendor).”
Finding a computer system that does everything a motor vehicle department needs is a challenge in every state, said Rutledge, who served as board chairwoman with the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The demands are complex as a wide variety of frequently changing data must be instantly accessible by police, courts, other state agencies and other states.
“I don’t know any state that has put in a completely new system,” Rutledge said.
Rutledge said some pieces of the new system are working. Some DMV transactions can be completed online because of it, she said.
Ide characterized the working portions as “tiny” compared with what is expected.
Vermont’s contract with Hewlett Packard expires Feb. 28, the date by which the state is supposed to have a fully functional, tested system. That won’t happen, Ide said.
“The code is deeply flawed. We have had numerous conversations with HP about this code,” Ide said. “We told them it’s fatal. They act as if it’s not so.”
The state has other contracts with Hewlett Packard, including for the purchase of many of its desktop computers and servers, said Richard Boes, state commissioner of the Department of Information and Innovation.
“Hewlett Packard has been largely a good vendor,” Boes said.
The predicament over the Department of Motor Vehicles system raises questions about the state’s overall computer operations.
Does it make sense for an individual department to go off in search of its own system, or should the state have one big system?
Boes, who joined Vermont state government last year, said it does make sense for the department to have its own system.
The Department of Motor Vehicles’ needs are unique, so it needs a system tailored to those needs. The key is to make sure it also integrates with other state agencies.
“You buy things in pieces,” Boes said. “If you bite off too much, sometimes you bite off more than you can chew.”
Not long after the state signed the contract for the motor vehicle system, it also contracted for a Tax Department computer system. That contract, for $7.8 million with CGI Group Inc. and Oracle, was signed in 2007 and the system went live in 2010, Tax Commissioner Mary Peterson said.
Though the system works, it also has had flaws, Peterson said. There were glitches in recording some collections, but the department was able to work with the vendors and consultants. Notably, the vendors did not change during the process.
Boes said he has advised Ide that if the Department of Motor Vehicles ends up having to pursue a new computer system that it wait until another state has found a successful one.
He said, though, that he still hopes Hewlett Packard will come through on this one.
Shumlin said on a more long-term basis, he wants the state to move to “cloud computing,” where the state no longer houses the servers but contracts out for that to be hosted elsewhere.
“It’s my belief state government should do what the Navy does,” Shumlin said. “Get out of the technology business and contract out to the cloud.”
Rep. Patrick Brennan, R-Colchester, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, which approved the contract and has monitored it since, said he believes changes in personnel with the vendors created a problem the state could not have foreseen.
“There’s no way we could have known those companies would be sold,” Brennan said.
Brennan and Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Richard Mazza, D-Grand Isle/Chittenden, said they would pressure the state to recoup its money, viewing $18 million as a sizable amount.
“We’ve got to continue to pursue this,” Mazza said.
If Vermonters were counting on their elected leaders to watchdog government spending, when it comes to computer systems, legislators bring little to the table. No single House or Senate committee has jurisdiction over computer purchases, and therefore, no committee develops expertise or a sense of the big picture.
“There is no oversight,” said Sen. Vince Illuzzi, R-Essex/Orleans. “It’s been done on an ad hoc basis.”
Sitting at a computer where he was struggling to learn to use Twitter, Illuzzi acknowledged many lawmakers are limited in their computer know-how, more so than with some of the more traditional functions of government.
“You can’t critically judge what you’re being sold,” he said.
Source:http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20120206/NEWS03/202060302/-18-million-computer-system-fails-DMV?odyssey=nav%7Chead
