Kansas DMV isn’t doing itself any favors with system hiccups

So you’re the Kansas Department of Revenue and you’ve got to upgrade the system at the Department of Motor Vehicles. That means you have to shut down your website and physical offices for a week as part of a two-phase $40 million plan that will have you repeating these steps this fall.

You’re installing new software and hardware to take two systems – one that processes driver’s licenses and the other that tracks registrations, titles and tags – and turn them into one database. There are 6.8 million records that you estimated would take 100 hours to move to this new database. You’ve got to train 900 employees in county and state offices. You’ve been collecting taxes since 2009, the same year that 3M began working on a customized solution for the state.

You just forgot one very important thing: People don’t like going to the DMV.