DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin and Idemia executive testify at a House Committee hearing Thursday (Photo: NCGA Screenshot)
Two adversaries sat side-by-side at a North Carolina hearing Thursday as House members tried to find the cause of a driver’s license backlog that delayed delivery of permanent IDs to hundreds of thousands of residents.
DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin said that what started as a problem with 2,150 licenses ballooned to a 354,697 backlog, where customers had to wait up to eight weeks for permanent licenses. He blamed the state’s longtime contractor, Idemia, for the backlog and a lack of communication about the growing problem. An Idemia vice president said DMV should have gone along with the company’s recommendations for a quicker resolution.
The importance of having a valid license is heightened by North Carolina’s relatively new law requiring voters to show ID at the polls or say why they don’t have one.
“Having a form of ID has always been critical but it’s even more critical now given legislation in regards to other things such as voter ID and elections laws,” said Rep. Harry Warren, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
A software problem, Goodwin called it a “glitch,” resulted in 2,150 people over a February weekend being able to renew their licenses online when they should not have been able to. Goodwin said the DMV immediately notified Idemia, the company that prints licenses. The company stopped production to retrieve the 2,150 cards by hand.
“What had been several days of stoppage had surprisingly turned into a 12-day backlog,” Goodwin said. “A stoppage of a few days turned into a backlog that inexplicably grew week by week.”
Lisa Shoemaker, Idemia’s vice president for global corporate relations, blamed DMV for failing to agree to a more efficient solution.
“DMV chose not to take Idemia’s proposed solution to address this backlog,” she said. “Throughout this situation DMV made it abundantly clear that they did not value Idemia’s expertise and input.”
The conflict between DMV and Idemia goes beyond the backlog. DMV has had contracts with the company and its predecessors since 1996. DMV recently decided to switch companies. Idemia is challenging that move.
Goodwin said Idemia produced licenses for people with darker skin with photos that were unrecognizable. Some North Carolina licenses were printed with State of Illinois on them, Goodwin said.
Shoemaker downplayed the extent of the problems with unrecognizable photos. Eight hundred cards had problems with dark photos, she said, amounting to a tiny fraction of the cards the company produced for the state. The company introduced new quality controls, she said.
Idemia’s contract ends on June 30. DMV has a new contract with Canadian Bank Note Secure Technologies.
DMV entered into that contract using a more streamlined approach rather than publicly requesting bids.
Goodwin said DMV used a contracting process the legislature approved for technology contracts.
The DMV decision to change vendors caught Idemia by surprise. While DMV was negotiating with the new vendor, it was telling Idemia that it was planning to put the contract out to competitive bid, Shoemaker said.
Several Republican House members said Goodwin improperly used that contracting flexibility meant for technology contracts.
Goodwin said creating IDs involves extensive use of technology. Moreover, Goodwin said, he informed another legislative committee that the DMV would be using the streamlined process for a driver’s license vendor.
Click below to listen to DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin detail some of the problems with Idemia that led to the driver’s license backlog.
The post For a two-month delay in delivering driver’s licenses, the DMV and its contractor blame each other appeared first on NC Newsline.