Online License Renewal Coming to New Hampshire Next Month

(CONCORD) New Hampshire drivers will be able to renew their licenses online, starting on December 1st. The Department of Safety has been beta-testing the new feature with employee volunteers, and hopes to give drivers the option of renewing their license without a visit to the DMV.

Safety Commissioner John Barthelmes says the new online feature will help reduce lines and improve customer service at the DMV substations around the state, and at a lower cost to taxpayers. Barthelmes hopes that allowing drivers to renew their licenses from their computers will improve the Department website’s spotty reputation. The current website offers no online services, buries useful links such pages deep, and makes it difficult for visitors to find the page they need, even if they use the site’s clunky search function. For drivers who need to update their car registration or address, the site provides a blank form as a PDF, but forces drivers to print out the document and mail it into Division of Motor Vehicles Headquarters in Concord.

“We know we have deficiencies,” Barthelmes argues. “The web is not what it needs to be.”

He adds that giving online customers greater control of their DMV experience helps taxpayers as well.

“With a properly designed website, we can reduce the amount of calls, and provide better service to those people who do call,” Barthelmes argues.

Online, Every Other Time

New Hampshire licenses are good for five years, after which drivers must come into one of 15 Division of Motor Vehicles offices around the state. When the new system is up and running, drivers will be allowed to renew once online, but will still have to retake the eye test and update their picture once a decade. Lead-footed drivers should be able to pay their traffic tickets online as well, starting next spring. Currently, offenders can pay their tickets in person, or by phone. But Barthelmes says there are only two operators handling all calls for traffic tickets statewide, leading to long delays and spotty service.

Barthelmes says the savings from online renewals has already been built into his Department’s budget, which defunded 12 positions. He hopes the web features will deliver better service with fewer people. Based on the experience of other states that have already adopted online license renewals, he’s set a goal of reducing foot traffic at DMV substations by 20%.

While the online license renewal feature has been repeatedly delayed, the DMV has implemented other IT projects, including linking Town Clerks across the state to the DMV vehicle registration database. Barthelmes says that as of 18 months ago, local officials were logging in hundreds of thousands of car registrations by hand, and mailing the forms to the state. In June of last year, Barthelmes told the Union Leader that the new system would be up and running by September of 2008. DMV missed that deadline, but Barthelmes says Nashua City Hall became the last major office to enter the system in April.

Real Time Data

Kevin O’Brien is Chief of Policy and Planning at Safety. He received emails from each DMV substation several times a day telling him how many people are coming in the door, and how long they are waiting. This allows Safety to dispatch extra help from its Concord Headquarters to overloaded stations and reduce customer wait times. Sending the reinforcements costs money, since the Division employees use state vehicles to get to the satellite offices and are paid for their time. But O’Brien says reducing backlogs at crowded field stations is worth the extra expense.

The CompStat Approach

Barthelmes says people who’ve been working in the Department for years have relied on anecdotal evidence to diagnose and address its problems, but he wants to use a steady stream of electronic information to move beyond conventional wisdom.

“Every decision we make is based on data,” Barthelmes states. “Oftentimes, you get some surprises.”

He says the reliance on data is based in part on the CompStat approach pioneered by New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Critics of CompStat argue that it pushes police to focus on numbers instead of people, and provides incentives to downgrade criminal activity or simply ignore low-level offenses in order to improve department statistics. CompStat’s defenders say it gives managers the information they need to set priorities and allocate scarce enforcement resources.

Barthelmes argues that access to real-time data gives his managers up to the minute information that they need to place Department personnel where they can be most effective.

Eliminating No-Show Driving Tests

Under New Hampshire law, drivers must take road tests once they reach the age of 75. The old system would automatically generate an appointment and notify elderly drivers in the mail. O’Brien says most drivers missed their appointments and had to reschedule.

“The no show rate was 90%-95% under the old system where DMV scheduled the appointments,” O’Brien claims. “Under the new appointment system, where over 75-year old drivers schedule their own appointments via phone or email, the no show rate is less than 5%.”

The Department of Safety did not provide statewide statistics for “no show” appointments before and after the policy change, so the Josiah Bartlett Center was unable to verify this claim. O’Brien says the instead of waiting for missed appointments, state personnel are now free to give road tests to first-time drivers. The Department has also reduced weekday demand by allowing driving schools to pay a premium to have their students take their driving tests after hours and on Saturdays.

Until this year, all new drivers would show up for driving tests under “first come, first served” system. Barthelmes remembers coming into work last summer to see a ling of teenagers waiting outside DMV headquarters hoping to take a road test at 8:00am. He says the first people in line had been waiting since 4am. He says the extra hours give test-takers stability and predictability that was lacking under the old method.

High Tech Licenses and the Paper License Fiasco

Barthelmes says Safety is also applying new technology to the Driver’s License itself. Last year, the DMV began issuing a high-tech license with beefed up security features, including new holograms and harder to duplicate laminate cover. But the new features can’t be produced immediately, so the state issued temporary paper licenses with a six-week expiration date and put the permanent license in the mail.

Barthelmes says that while the temporary license actually has more security features than the old documents, the paper copy didn’t look like an official state ID, causing confusion for everyone from convenience store clerks to ballot clerks. Barthelmes told the Union Leader after the botched rollout that his department even had to sit down the Transportation Security Administration to make sure newly licensed Granite Staters could get on an airplane.

“We didn’t do the marketing that we needed to do,” Barthelmes now admits. But he says the new system has improved security.

Instead of handing over a permanent license immediately, the DMV now checks to make sure driving privileges haven’t been suspended elsewhere. Barthelmes says one to two percent of new licenses are under suspension in another state. He also claims eight percent of the addresses listed by applicants aren’t valid. DMV then investigates the address in case the driver has moved or simply wrote it down incorrectly before mailing it out. This step helps ensure that a New Hampshire license won’t be forwarded out of state or intercepted by someone looking to steal an ID.

DMV’s Bad Reputation

The Commissioner admits that the DMV has occasionally earned its reputation as bureaucratic wasteland, but doesn’t think his employees should take the blame, since they have had little say in establishing the systems that frustrate New Hampshire drivers.

“We don’t put our employees in a position to succeed,” says Barthelmes. “But even when a flawed system is at fault, most times, state employees get the blame.”

Even though none of the Department of Safety’s budget comes from the state’s General Fund, Barthelmes says he hasn’t been immune to the effects of a tight budget year. The Safety budget defunded 20 state trooper positions, and will not replace any of the State Police cruisers for the next two years. He’s also looking for innovative ways to save the Department money, including replacing the lights on cruisers with LED’s that allow troopers at construction sites to shut off their engines for 45 minutes each hour. The Department’s Director of Administration, Wes Colby, has been recognized by the state for his program to burn Safety’s waste automotive oil to provide electricity to the headquarters building. And Barthelmes says he’s reassigned state troopers to patrol areas closer to their homes into order to save both hours and mileage.

Barthelmes acknowledges that Granite Staters may never look forward to a trip to the Division of Motor Vehicles, or any state agency, but he believes harnessing new technologies reduce the number of trips that the average New Hampshire driver needs to make to a DMV substation, and provide a faster, friendlier, and less expensive experience when they do have to visit in person.