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May 10, 2011 By Sarah Rich
Some California drivers may cringe at the thought of going to a Department of Motor Vehicles field office to take care car or license issues. Now they can avoid that step with an on online tool at their disposal — the option to establish identities through the DMV website to access more Web-based services.
Last fall, DMV set up an identity and access management system with its partner IBM to allow users to set up a user name and password on its website.
Since then, more than 1 million users have created online identities. The rapid popularity is a surprise to the DMV, which didn’t anticipate the quick response.
“The rate at which we were establishing identities, it was faster than American Express,” said Bernard Soriano, the DMV CIO, on Tuesday, May 10, at Government Technology Conference West in Sacramento, Calif. “It was faster than a lot of private companies.”
Once users create an identity for the site, they can access services such as driver record, vehicle registration information and registration renewal reminders. In the future, the DMV is slated to roll out more applications accessible through an online user identity.
“The most requested item from our customers is their driving record,” said DMV Director George Valverde in a statement. “We have not only made their record easily and securely accessible to our customers, we added many more features that customers can access through their very own personalized online DMV account.”
Soriano said it was important for the department to utilize attributes such as a driver’s license and Social Security number to verify a user’s identity. Because a person already provides that information to the DMV when obtaining a driver’s license, the department can verify the user’s identity based on those attributes.
“One of the things that we really, really needed to focus on was absolutely ensuring the person who is interacting with us is who they say they are,” Soriano said.
The DMV plans to make the website and the identity feature more user-friendly. Soriano said older people tend to have more difficulty with the site. When the identity feature was first introduced, the DMV’s call center was flooded with calls from users asking how to set up their online accounts.
The California Employment Development Department (EDD) is in the process of developing a similar identification access management system. In the future, the DMV and the EDD will integrate their systems so that users can access services from both departments by using one identity, Soriano said.
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http://www.govtech.com/e-government/California-DMV-Online-Identity-Popular.html
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I hate that I had to create a user id to renew my license online. I think this is an example of just because you can do something, should you? Is there any real value in it for the public or are you just irritating them? I could see that a login should be required if you have a repeated need to access confidential records such as an insurance company, but aren't they already hard wired in? I honestly can't remember the last time I needed to go on the DMV website unless it was to renew registration tags. I'm pretty sure I won't remember the account the next time I need something and I suspect I'm not alone.
I think this is a move in the right direction-As long as the site is extremely secured. I can just imagine the abuse of the site if it isn't secured enough. Lord knows that the lines at the DMV are ridiculously long and most of the dmv employees take their sweet time doing their jobs-which makes it worse. So kudos for management on this one.
Any technology provided to the public should be optional- not a req'd. With that said, I would love to have an online option to avoid the long DMV lines. We have so many online accounts for online banking, online credit cards, etc. Welcome to the overwhelming self-service information overload era. Self-service is over-rated. Miss the full service gas stations. ;)
Is it possible to have our driver's license put on a card that fits on a key chain? I don't always carry my wallet with me and it would be a lot easier to have my driver's license on my keychain. Thanks. Mary Ann Orecchio