New Vehicle License Snafu: Weak Oversight, Weak Paychecks?

Mr. Ehrisman posts an anonymous letter that may shed some light on why the new SDCARS vehicle license registration system launched so disastrously last month. At the very least, it offers some of the answers Mr. Wiken and others (but not the mainstream media) have been asking since the debacle began July 1. Among the highlights :

• Anonymous says the state Bureau of Information and Telecommunications took on the SDCARS project in 2005. They intended to build it in-house. BIT hired six full-time employees and burned one million dollars—half their allotted budget for the project—before admitting in summer 2006 that they wouldn't be able to build the system after all.
• As reported in a July 24 Pierre Capital Journal article, the state then purchased software from Unisys for $1.2 million. Unisys had designed the software for Indiana; we then spent another $1.1 million (as of June 30) customizing the software. (Perhaps questions can be addressed to Sioux Falls-based Charles Kneip, director of Motor Vehicle Solutions Practice for Unisys.)
  
• Part of the problem, says Anon, is a lack of control and oversight. How could the Department of Revenue and Regulation Secretary Paul Kinsman not have found time in three years to call BIT Commissioner Otto Doll and ask a few simple things, like whether the new system could process boat and trailer registrations and compute fees? (Those are just a few of the things the new system couldn't do on deployment July 1.)
• Another part of the problem may be low wages. Anon says North Dakota starts junior programmers at $58 an hour. Nebraska starts junior programmers at $61 an hour. South Dakota pays all programmers, junior and senior, $48 an hour. "While this may seem like a benefit," says Anon, "the effect is that for a division manager or department head it makes it harder to contract out work to better qualified firms. The result is sometimes that the apparent savings means hiring less qualified services that cost more in the long run." Hmm... there may be a lesson there for everyone on teacher pay, as well. You get what you pay for....