Exclusive: Idaho’s new DMV system ‘a debacle.’ Now state is paying counties for overtime
The Idaho Transportation Department will spend thousands of dollars to reimburse counties for overtime costs following the flawed rollout of a system that was meant to speed up people’s trips to the Division of Motor Vehicles offices but has instead made them slower.
The Gem System was supposed to serve as a much-needed update to a previous system that was 40 years old. It’s a records-keeping system meant to link people’s licenses with their vehicle registrations. County officials, including Ada County Assessor Bob McQuade, said it was rolled out too early.
“Before, our transaction time was about five minutes,” McQuade said by phone. “Now it’s about 11 minutes.”
The new system already requires more information than the old system, which was likely going to make transactions take longer for at least the next year as people renew through the new system, McQuade said. McQuade and other county assessors are tasked with managing the DMVs; sheriffs manage driver’s license offices for their counties.
But the system was also full of glitches, making even the easiest transactions take even longer and forcing employees to find workarounds, some of which would be sufficient one day and outdated the next.
The result? Long lines — sometimes up to three hours — at DMV offices across the state, oftentimes accompanied by an outdoor wait because of COVID-19 protocols. DMV employees started racking up overtime hours as some offices opted to stay open longer to serve people waiting in lines.
“It’s been an absolute debacle,” said Joe Decker, Canyon County’s spokesperson.
Overtime compensation
The Gem System took effect Oct. 13 after ITD pushed it out over the three-day Columbus Day weekend. Slowdowns happened almost immediately after. By Oct. 29, ITD had worked with Gov. Brad Little’s office to extend the expiration on vehicle registrations and driver’s licenses. Any registration or license that was set to expire from September to December would be extended through Jan. 31.
ITD offered the money to counties Nov. 1, Jillian Garrigues, spokesperson for ITD, said by phone.
The department offered to pay counties up to $30 an hour for up to 24 hours of overtime per employee. The idea originally was to offer counties a chance to catch up on the backlog by having employees work on weekends or before or after business hours, Garrigues said.
ITD has set aside $200,000 to compensate counties. That money comes from the department’s annual budget for DMVs as allocated by the Legislature. As of Wednesday, the department had paid $15,000 to nine counties.
It is not clear how much will be paid in all. Some counties have been able to work through their backlogs without additional compensation.
But some of the biggest bills are yet to come. Ada County estimates it will receive at least $26,000 through the program, Denise Otter, administrative and DMV division manager for the county, said in a phone interview. Canyon County estimates it will get about $8,640, Decker told the Statesman.
That may not be enough.
“So far, our assessor’s office has paid out 550 hours of overtime, which is over $13,000,” Decker said by phone. “It wouldn’t make us whole, but we appreciate the gesture.”
The reimbursement is offered only from Nov. 1, 2020, to Jan. 15, 2021, according to a letter that ITD DMV Administrator Alberto Gonzalez sent to Ada County that the Statesman obtained through a public records request.
Decker said it is difficult at this point to keep asking employees to work more overtime because they are tired of the problems. Employees are “beat down” by the new system, he said.
Counties are required to send their employees’ weighted hourly costs — their wage plus associated benefits — to ITD. The Ada County Commission approved an agreement with ITD to accept the money at its meeting Tuesday.
Garrigues said she was not aware of any effort to aid customers who got stuck in the long lines, other than the extension on renewals for licenses and registration that expired Jan. 31 (and created long lines once again as the deadline loomed).
Employees quit, change job duties
Some county-level DMV employees have quit because of frustrations, officials from both Ada and Canyon counties told the Statesman.
In Ada County, officials say at least two people have left the DMV since the change as a result of the changes. In Canyon, six people have left.
“Our employees get the brunt of the public dissatisfaction with what’s going on,” Decker said.
Both counties say they’ve been able to replace those employees, but Otter said taking the time to train someone new to replace employees who left just adds to the problems.
The overtime compensation also doesn’t account for the number of people who have had to shift their duties to help keep up with the backlog.
ITD has had to send employees to several counties, including Ada and Canyon, to offer additional help in processing requests and moving people through lines. Canyon County Assessor Brian Stender has also had to reallocate employees to help process renewal requests made through the mail.
Stender ”is going above and beyond. He’s driving to our DMV every day, picking up the mail and renewals, and bringing it back to the assessor’s office at the county courthouse,” Decker said. “Then he’s having the front office staff there, along with some of our print shop people, help stuff envelopes and get things prepared so we can get things out the door faster. We’re trying to take as much as they can off the plate of the people out at the DMV.”
At least one county employee went to a job with ITD, Garrigues said.
‘Not going to be perfect’
Garrigues said there was no way to determine in advance what problems the new system would cause, despite extensive testing. In 2018, there were system-wide outages on the driver’s license side of the program, but those were caused by a third-party vendor, not the Gem System, she said.
Stender thought ITD knew of the problems before the rollout, however, Decker told the Statesman. Both Stender and McQuade agreed the system was rolled out too soon.
ITD has been pushing updates to the Gem System’s software and has dedicated phone and chat lines to help DMV employees navigate problems, but that hasn’t solved all of the issues.
“There are still problems with the software,” McQuade said. “It’s time-consuming, working around them.”
Garrigues said accusations that the rollout was botched are unfair. The system is now stable, she said.
“Any large system upgrade where you’re transitioning 8 million DMV records, any big computer system upgrade, it’s not going to be perfect,” she said. “There are going to be learning curves to overcome things to fix. I think that we’ve done a great job at … finding the problems and the solutions to make the system better.”
Most initial problems following the rollout resulted from “decades’ worth” of data that was missing or invalid and that needed to be fixed, Garrigues said. The new system requires more validation and tries to correct mistakes found in the old data, slowing transaction times as information is verified.
To cut down on the lines, officials have encouraged people to renew registrations online. But not every problem can be handled online.
For Ada County residents who need to go in person, appointments are available but hard to get and booked months in advance. People who are transferring registrations from another state still need to go in person, as do those who need a VIN inspection to transfer a title.
“It’s good to check back on that, though,” Otter said. Appointments “do get canceled and things open up, so if you don’t get one right away, you can check back.”
In the meantime, people living in Idaho’s two most populated counties may have to anticipate more long wait times over the next few months.
“We’ve ordered some software to help us manage lines better in addition to our current queuing system,” McQuade said. “It’ll let people go back to their cars and notify them when it’s time to come in. It’ll help us manage the lines better, as the worst is hopefully behind us.”
This story was originally published February 8, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
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