The department — which Gordon said he considers to be an entity with a strong “retail presence” — has debuted its virtual office, brought Real ID to residents via pop-up offices, and now accepts credit card payments. It’s also debuted an online service to let residents seek duplicate licenses for those lost or stolen; automated the application process for motor carrier permit renewals; and connected directly with IT companies in two “vendor day” events. And in a conversation with a UiPath executive on Thursday during its virtual “Reboot Work Festival,” Gordon elaborated on the department’s ongoing initiatives. Among the takeaways:
- Document digitization and distribution. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everything from DMV field office visits to driving tests and prompted the agency to adapt its services. Responding to the widespread and immediate need for many of its 10,000 employees to work remotely starting in March has driven the digitization and online distribution of documents, Gordon said. It’s also enabled “some of the data entry and some of the administrative and review tasks that they would normally need to do on paper in the office.”
“We’re a retail presence, we’re a retail footprint of the state, so you can imagine — everything a retailer, a grocery store … would have, we have because we see tens of thousands of customers a day even during COVID-19,” he said. - Remove data entry from the equation. Actual data entry may never disappear. But the DMV director said changing realities driven by the pandemic and the rise of technology mean that customers simply don’t want to sit “across the counter from somebody while they’re essentially doing data entry.” Robotic process automation, a UiPath offering, can do it instead. (DMV is a customer of UiPath.) What the director termed “digitization strategies” that are now on the market can also help get incoming data ready for entry. This, he said, reduces the time anyone needs to be in an office — and could free up employees to learn new skills and move up “the economic food chain.” It’s also helpful at speeding up service in a state with 40 million residents — and millions of customers.
- Streamlining process. DMV staffers handle thousands of papers daily, Gordon said, which quickly adds up to millions of pieces of paper total and tons of papers that need to be shared statewide. Digitization via machine vision; machine learning and optical character recognition (OCR); and data entry via automation also help the state and the department stay green by avoiding the vehicle trips that might be needed to share documents. A specific use case, the director said, is the digitization of many of the items required of residents seeking Real ID, the federally securitized identification required to fly domestically and enter some federal facilities after Oct. 1. DMV has had to adhere to what he called “very specific requirements handed down by the Department of Homeland Security,” while ensuring the documents residents provide — including a passport, a birth certificate or a bill — are recognized.” And so, that’s a combination of digitization strategies and automation strategies to make that real, so we can be more efficient and effective to serve our clients,” Gordon said.
