The Indianapolis Star has a scathing editorial excoriating the performance of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. They say that the poor service Hoosiers are receiving in the wake of the installation of the BMV’s new computer system is unacceptable and that Gov. Daniels needs to have a “stern talk” with Joel Silverman.
Frankly, I’m inclined to cut the BMV some slack on this one; not because I have low expectations for state government, but because I have low expectations for transitions between computer systems. Such transitions, in my experience, are always bumpy. And my experience at the Lafayette BMV yesterday to get new plates wasn’t too bad. I was there about 45 minutes. The only complaint, of sorts, I would mention is that the BMV’s “waiting time” figures are flawed. Supposedly, you can go online and figure out how long the wait is at your license branch. The problem is that the clock doesn’t start running on their system until they get you checked in. In my case, about half of my waiting time was spent standing in line to get checked in. So the 22 some odd minutes it showed on my receipt was only about half of the story.
Bumpy != Broke
I’ve been a part of a few big changes like this. Yes, bumpy is to be expected. But having their self service ATMs and other services down for 3 weeks are not bumps.
From what I’m reading, the biggest failure is that someone didn’t hit the “UNDO” button and restore from tape within the first 24 hours. They instead started down the “I’m almost there, if I fix this everything will start working right”. I’m guilty of that too, but it never works out for the best. Anymore, I give veto rights to someone that isn’t a part of the project that can be objective. They know what should be working by what time, and they know how long the back-out plan takes (there should ALWAYS be a way out). If they see that things are going south, they order the back-out without question. BMV didn’t have this person, and weeks of downtime for large parts of the system are just not acceptable.
http://www.indystar.com/fairfood
This might get your mind off moving. The State Fair had a food contest to help celebrate its 150th anniversary.
Two things that the state government is involved with has been vastly improved from the good old days. One is the license branches and the other is the State Fair.
About 10 years ago the Fair got a new manager who has worked wonders. I think the Daniels’ adminstration wisely retained him.
Not so long ago ,in the 1960s, all license plates expired the last day of February. To make matters worse you had to show proof that you had paid your personal property taxes before you could purchase the plates. A 4 hour wait was common the last week of Feb. The lines were so long they streched outside into the cold. Try to imagine what it was like to wait in line for hours only to be told your paperwork was not in order. Also there were no preprinted forms such as the ones we get in the mail now and the clerk had to type in all the information every year.
Oh, agreed, things are MUCH better. I also support many of the ideas that they have put in, like monitoring the wait even if it isn’t as good as it should be.
Is everyone really this easily duped by PR blitzes. The monitoring of time isn’t flawed, it is set up to produce the desired result – a ticket with a wait time that is less than what you remember having been the wait in prior times. At some point, we’ll be inundated with press stories about how the average BMV wait is only 15 minutes or whatever it works out to be. We’ll feel happy and that things are improved — even though they are exactly the same.
I can say with certianty that the visit I had to the BMV to renew my DL this year was MUCH better than 4 years ago, wait time on the ticket or not. I had to wait behind one other person this time, last time it was 12. So, when I see an attempt to monitor wait times and I SEE that my personal time has been reduced, I see improvement, not “exactly the same”.
While it is not as accurate as it could be if somehow you could get the clock started when you walked in, it still measures SOMETHING. Most of my PAINFUL memories of waiting were sitting in the plastic chairs, not in the line from the door to the desk. Or, if the line from the door was long, like 20 minutes, the wait in the chairs was 60+ minutes.