Everyone's Watching

Abstract

In 1996 he Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety launched the Genesis project, a technology-enabled reengineering endeavor. In September of 1999, after four years of planning, organizational restructuring and system development, the new system was released. To the accompaniment of great publicity, it fell dramatically short of expectations. This case provides the background necessary to understand the origins and shortcomings of the system, then focuses on the turn-around effort that took the system to a point of successful operation within a year of its going into production. The turn around was accomplished under great pressure to retreat to the legacy system. The effort involved a synergy of manual and technical corrections to bring overall system performance to acceptable levels. The DMV now faces the formidable challenge of taking full responsibility for the long-term maintenance of a system that was designed and implemented by outside contractors.