LANSING – The collapse of the Michigan Department of State’s project to consolidate and improve its technology systems for renewal of license plates and watercraft registration became so severe that 75 percent of vehicles no longer could have their plates or registrations renewed online, leading to the department’s unveiling Tuesday of a temporary backup online system.
What was known as the Business Application Modernization project fell apart last year once the state, fed up with HP Enterprise Services, the project vendor, canceled the contract with the company. Then the state and HP sued each other, and while the overall case is still pending, a Kent Circuit judge sided with the state on a preliminary injunction and ordered HP to turn over the source code to the state.
What had been occurring was persons renewing online and in branch offices saw their data stored in different places. The idea of the BAM project was to merge that data into one system, but not having the code for so long prevented data synchronizations and anyone who had renewed at a branch office was locked out of the online system, said Fred Woodhams, Department of State spokesperson.
It has been 13 months since the last data synchronization, and once a full year had gone by, the number of persons locked out of the online system grew substantially, he said.
“At this point it’s just kind of reached critical mass,” he said. “We’re beyond a year now and it greatly increases the amount of affected customers.”
As a result, the department has set up an alternative online renewal system that looks a bit different than the one under the ExpressSOS system but is designed to allow online renewals for those otherwise locked out of that system.
Woodhams said the state hopes to synchronize the data in the next month or two. At present, the Department of Technology, Management and Budget is working with the department to keep systems functioning. At some point, the department will pursue a new vendor with the goal of merging the systems, he said.
“The time spent in court fighting the vendor to return to work and give the state the computer code delayed vital work on ExpressSOS.com and significantly affected our customers’ ability to use the online services,” Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said. “We’re committed to finding a permanent solution that meets our customers’ needs. In the meantime, we want to make sure customers know we have a temporary option.”
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