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DMV’s Dash Pass penalized poor, less tech-savvy

On the morning Dash Pass died, the line outside the Department of Motor Vehicles’ Decatur Boulevard office began forming shortly after sunrise.

By the time the doors opened at 8 a.m., humanity numbering in the hundreds stretched like a funeral procession into the parking lot. Mesquite trees provided little shade for those slouching toward counters in search of driver’s license renewals and vehicle registrations.

A DMV employee in a striped dress played line judge, settling a dispute and yanking a couple of cutters from the crowd like your old fifth-grade teacher at lunch time.

At DMV headquarters, it had finally dawned on officials who had promoted Dash Pass, which enabled customers with smartphones to remotely reserve places in line and then adjust repeatedly to fit their busy schedules, that their expensive investment in technology was bogging down the system. It was a fact any clerk could have told them, a sad truth those without smartphones who were forced to stand in deceivingly long lines could have shouted at them any time during business hours.

The frustrating service and long lines did, however, make an impression on state lawmakers during budget time at the 2015 session of the Legislature. The DMV scored a healthy increase in funding that will mean 93 new hires.

Nevada DMV Director Troy Dillard said 20 percent of those who signed into Dash Pass didn’t make their scheduled appointments.

“We embraced a new technology that was intended to provide an enhanced customer experience,” Dillard said in a statement. “The technology was not as effective as promised once it was put into a real-world environment.”

In fact, DMV insiders noted immediately, the technology had never been used for lines of the size the Las Vegas offices regularly receive. It worked fine in smaller offices, where it wasn’t really needed.

And to date no one in authority at the state has acknowledged the lack of fairness inherent in a system that allows those with superior technology to cut in line ahead of people who have been standing in line sometimes for hours. It marginalized the poor and less tech-savvy seniors and placed them literally at the back of the line.

The slowing of the process was evident from the outside, multiple DMV front-line workers say.

“I averaged from 10 to 20 no-shows each day,” says one DMV veteran not authorized to speak for the agency. “When I call a customer to my window, I try to give them anywhere from one to two minutes to sit in front of me.”

Do the math: Just one “tech,” as they call them, receiving 20 no-shows per shift was spending 40 minutes per day not serving other customers. Even the low end of my reliable source’s calculation means each helpful DMV employee wasn’t being of assistance for 20 minutes a day while waiting for Dash Pass delinquents to arrive.

Here’s a factor in the problem that Dillard neglected to mention: Abuses by private companies that wait in line and process DMV services for a fee.

“They were calling from multiple cell phone numbers to monopolize as many slots as they could so their staff could get as much done as possible and have backup slots reserved in case they missed the call to go to a window,” one DMV veteran says.

But don’t think you’ve seen the last of Dash Pass. Crafted properly, he said, customers will be freed from hours of waiting at the DMV.

As Dillard said, “Ultimately, we want our customers to be able to conduct most of their business with us without a visit to the office.”

At last, there’s something DMV officials and the rest of us agree on unanimously.

John L. Smith is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. E-mail him at jsmith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295.

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