Blue Earth County will be offering extra hours in the days leading up to the shut-down and will close its licensing bureau completely on July 21. Nicollet County will maintain regular hours throughout the shutdown, providing drivers license renewals, Department of Natural Resources licenses, and vital records even as staff is forced to turn away folks looking for vehicle registrations.
The Driver and Vehicle Services Division of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety is replacing a 30-year-old mainframe computer system and will be unable to provide typical service to local licensing offices from July 20 to July 24. In addition, online vehicle tab renewal and other online services will be unavailable even longer — from July 17 to July 24.
The agency is limiting the impact on people seeking a drivers license or drivers license renewal, shutting down that part of the computer system only on the weekend of July 22-23. Some license offices — particularly in the metro area — offer Saturday hours and will be impacted, but none of the offices in the Mankato area are open on weekends.
The new system is to be up and running sometime on Monday, July 24.
"So hopefully, implementation goes smoothly so we can reopen on Tuesday (July 25)," said Nicollet County Public Services Manager Jaci Kopet about providing the full range of services.
Nicollet County will operate its licensing office at the courthouse on regular hours throughout, providing the numerous other licenses that aren't impacted by the DPS computer. Along with drivers licenses, customers will still be able to get vehicle licenses issued by the DNR such as for boats and ATVs; vital records including birth and death certificates and marriage licenses; and more.
Blue Earth County is taking a different approach to the week of July 17. The licensing offices in the Blue Earth County Government Center on South Fifth Street will be open extra hours on July 17, 18 and 19 — remaining open until 6:30 p.m. — to allow people do their licensing work in advance of the computer shutdown.
After offering regular 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours on July 20, Blue Earth County will close its licensing offices completely on Friday, July 21, according to information from Taxpayer Services Director Michael Stalberger.
Vehicle registration is by far the largest use of the computer system with more than 7 million vehicles registered statewide in 2016, according to DPS. The agency, mostly through the local licensing offices, issued or renewed more than 1.8 million drivers licenses and other state ID cards last year, and 1.4 million vehicle titles were issued.
Because vehicle tabs run by calendar month, no one will be facing a citation for expired tabs simply because of the lack of services next week. The timing of the computer system switch means that, even if there are computer glitches in the first few days of the new system, people should have time to get their new tabs or plates before August arrives.
"We can be open again by month's end for sure," Kopet said.
The new system is expected to be more efficient and provide more timely service for customers, she said. Currently, information provided by people seeking licenses is inputted by local staff later in the day and sent to the state, where it is manually entered again into the state computer system.
The new system will allow local staff to directly enter information into the state system as the customer supplies it, reducing steps and resulting in quicker turnaround on records such as vehicle titles.
"They won't be six to eight weeks out anymore," Kopet said.
She did warn that wait-times might be a little longer in the early days of the new system as clerks become accustomed to immediately entering data rather than doing it after the customer has been served.
©2017 The Free Press (Mankato, Minn.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
