E-government: Maine learns to drive

Most of us regret the picture on our driver’s license, a fuzzy photo that makes us look like some poorly assembled version of ourselves. But imagine how much worse that shot looks for those who first had to wait six hours and burn up half a day’s work before getting it taken. Distortingly grim, probably, yet the computer foul-up that contributed to those pictures this summer at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles may have captured a pivotal time in Maine’s sometimes unattractive transition to a digital government.

The state employs 12,000 people spread out in buildings all over Maine, but soon you will recognize government mostly in cyberspace, like a local Google that directs you to services. Maine.gov and its many links provide about 300 online services now, but that’s a tiny fraction of what they will offer in the future, for better or worse.

Almost always better, I think, and here’s a small, license-centered example. In Maine, when you go to the local motor-vehicles office, you get a ticket that tells you how long the wait will be, a thoughtful gesture that remains largely unappreciated when the wait time is several hours. Sensible Alaskans, on the other hand, would know before leaving their homes or businesses how long they would need to set aside to renew their licenses because they can click on a Web camera that shows the waiting areas in real time of each of their state’s motor-vehicle offices. (I watched one recently and, never having been to Alaska can nevertheless assure you that, in Anchorage, the Benson Boulevard office is your best bet for quick service – lots of empty seats.)

But even this is sheer Pleistocene stuff compared with renewing licenses online (You still need a picture? What, no eye scan?) or paying with a credit card and digital signature for whatever government decides it should charge for. And that is not nearly as important as this: Government services are limited or expensive in Maine often for the same reasons doing business here can be expensive – relatively few customers spread out over a large area. Computers eliminate that distance in hundreds of instances, reducing one of Maine’s major disadvantages compared with other states.

The rough part is the transition, and while it is true government is forever in transition – pity whoever is not – the recent cases of computer failure at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and with MaineCare earlier also represented the two largest computer overhauls ever attempted by the state. It is notable that, while both stalled, the second went better than the first.

The Web page “is the new face of government,” Secretary of State Matt Dunlap said the other day, certainly preferring a happier face than the one his office, which oversees the motor-vehicle bureau, has seen recently. And while Maine generally does well on state rankings for electronic government, despite a few black flies in the system, Dick Thompson, Maine’s chief information officer, says the state’s recent experiences have given it a lot more expertise and that a new project management office will help agencies not only solve problems that arise but warn them of what to watch out for. The Legislature recently helped out too by having its new oversight office begin a months-long audit of the state’s information systems, a very good idea.

It was the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, in fact, that first heard the news about the motor-vehicle office’s computer problems. The state’s vendor, it was told, had spent half the $13 million taken from the Highway Fund to build a computer system, but the early results suggested a future of failure. The committee allowed the Secretary of State’s Office to try again with the remaining money, which it did with some success despite the public failure.

The license renewal computer breakdown, you probably didn’t know, could be found in modules two and three of a six-module computer overhaul, with the first module (common services) running smoothly and the first part of the second module (insurance verification) doing fine too. The problem, according to Dunlap, was that the testing process for licenses didn’t anticipate so much information being requested or added all at once and the system repeatedly gagged and shut down. (Modules four, five and six, for the curious, are vehicle titles, registrations and commercial services respectively. They were expected to be running by the end of the year, but that schedule recently was tossed out.)

MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program, had a more serious computer collapse earlier this year, and it too said its vendor didn’t perform as hoped. An important difference between the two is that BMV was able to build its system one piece at a time and so could stop when smoke and flames began coming from its computer; MaineCare and the many health providers it could not pay were stuck with the fire.

There will be more fires as the state continues with its computer overhaul – financial services and central voter registration are next – but the benefits in helping agencies run more efficiently and providing more and easier access for the public are abundantly worth it.

The driver’s license computer problem has been repaired, by the way, even as people still suffer in long lines at BMV offices, providing an example of the limits of what technology can do. The wait that now plagues license renewers is the near doubling of the number of people this summer required to get new licenses – it seems the state hasn’t spread out license expirations evenly among years. Dunlap couldn’t really explain why the state would schedule a license-renewal time twice as busy as any other time, but at least he didn’t try to blame the computer for it.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.