By Jonathan Walters

There’s one thing I’ve never understood about state government: departments of motor vehicles. State governments all profess to want taxpayers to believe that government is good and efficient and working in their interest. At the same time, state governments know that there is one department that just about every taxpayer is going to have to deal with very directly and on a regular basis. So why not do everything possible to make that interaction a satisfying one?

Yet departments of motor vehicles, for the most part, are still among the most vexing, opaque, bull-headed bureaucracies that citizens ever deal with. These days, even state revenue departments are more consumer-friendly.

Now, I’m a veteran of the District of Columbia’s DMV, whose chief purpose in life seems to be to both employ and annoy huge numbers of District residents. Which means my standards aren’t exactly high. But since I’ve moved to New York State, I’ve learned that the bureaucratic pathology of DMVs isn’t endemic to D.C.

Now it’s not that the folks at my local DMV office aren’t courteous. They’re very nice. It’s just that if you come to them with any request that is even two degrees off of the ordinary, they can’t help you. Twice now, I’ve tried to register older vehicles in New York for which I didn’t have the title papers. No soap, said the friendly folks at the DMV. No soap, even though in the first case the vehicle was already registered in my name — it was just registered in another state. In the second instance, the auto in question is a handsome old gas-guzzler with no registration or title. Certainly that’s an issue, but presumably the vehicle identification number could tell us whether thieves at some point since 1971 developed a hankering for ghost-gray Cadillac Sedans deVille, and whether mine was one of the ones they ripped off. No soap.

Sure, this amounts to a personal rant. But I have yet to talk to a person in any state who went out of their way to mention the stellar work being done by the people running their DMVs. More often you get some horror story about long waits in the wrong line and “can’t” for an answer.

So, a modest proposal: Given that every state knows that nearly every resident is at some point is going to come to them for service, DMVs might think about actually getting into the service — even the problem-solving — business. Chances are it will be immensely satisfying to the DMV’s employees. And I guarantee it will be immensely satisfying to taxpayers.

Jonathan Walters is a staff correspondent for Governing.

Agree? Disagree? Want to expand on a point? E-mail us at mailbox@governing.com, and we'll post your comments here. Please include your name, location, government or business title or job description, and a daytime phone number (for verification purposes).

Reader Response:

CUSTOMER SERVICE IN VIRGINIA

You obviously have not surveyed anyone from Virginia regarding the “stellar work being done by the people running their DMVs.” The vision of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is to deliver the ultimate in customer service. Our agency boasts a national and international reputation as being customer-focused, efficient and professional — offering service that rivals, and often exceeds, the private sector.

At Virginia DMV’s 73 customer service centers, lines are a thing of the past. Our queuing management system enables customers to take a number and sit comfortably in chairs until a service representative becomes available. In fact, last year we served 6.1 million customers who conducted 8.1 million transactions and who waited, on average, a mere six and a half minutes for service.

Revolutionary for a government service provider, DMV built a virtual customer service center which provides citizens and businesses a convenient web-based customer service delivery outlet. At www.dmv.state.va.us, transactions are conducted in real time with no manual intervention required to update records or issue requested products. Virginia DMV serves as the e-government model for the Commonwealth of Virginia. The agency won the MIT e-Citizen Award and the e-Gov Pioneer Award in July 2000. We also have been featured in Civic.com and the New York Times.

Virginia’s DMV was the first in the nation to offer driver’s license renewals over the Internet. The first citizen to renew his driver’s license online was a soldier stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. Instead of waiting until his next visit to Virginia (550 miles away) to conduct a face-to-face transaction, the soldier conducted his own transaction at 6:30 a.m. In seconds, his driving record was updated, and his new driver’s license was produced overnight and mailed to him in Georgia within three business days.

Web services are provided to our customers at no extra charge. In fact, customers conducting online transactions, such as driver’s license and vehicle registration renewals, receive discounts. DMV gives a dollar discount for renewing driver’s licenses via the Internet. For vehicle registration renewals, the discount is $1 for one year and $3 for two years.

Customers can also purchase personalized license plates, request replacement licenses and identification cards, order copies of their driver and vehicle records, and more through the DMV web site.

According to our customers, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is fulfilling its vision to deliver the ultimate in customer service. In a recent customer satisfaction survey conducted by the University of Virginia’s Center for Survey Research, 96.1 percent of the respondents were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the service received from DMV, and 93.8 percent rated our performance as good or excellent.

Citizens who interact with DMV do so, for the most part, because the law requires it. But we’ve cast aside the image of DMV as a regulatory agency. We are a service provider, here to serve Virginia’s citizens. Our vision is to deliver the ultimate in customer service. Every decision made in our agency is based on realizing that vision. Our customers, the citizen taxpayers, deserve it.

Richard D. Holcomb
Commissioner
Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles
Richmond

Recently in View:

Porn and the Public Library: the need for human “filters” (posted August 2, 2000)

Learning to Love a Cost Overrun: At any price, the Big Dig is worth it (posted July 29, 2000)

The Tax Holiday Addiction: e-taxes and short-term thinking (posted July 23, 2000)

Johnny Be Good: an ineffective way to catch deadbeat parents (posted July 18, 2000)

The Law of Redundancy: If one law doesn’t work, try again (posted July 12, 2000)

Complete index of previous columns

Copyright © 2000, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.