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by lern_too_spel
1267 days ago
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> I don't think the requirements for obtaining a REAL ID are overwhelming for legal citizens and immigrants. Maybe the computer systems are well-thought out and efficient, but what you're missing is that DMVs are terribly time-wasting, and nobody wants to go to one until it's absolutely necessary. Until the federal government makes it a priority to clean up customer-facing bureaucracies at all levels of government they interact with, these sorts of migrations will remain quagmires. |
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They're not. Far from it. Not the systems implemented for the states, and not the systems implemented by the federal government. At the end of the day it is enterprise software written to specs created by state and federal government. In most cases the new system has improvements over the previous one (better UI, more secure), but that's just because the federal government helped pay the bill for a shiny new system.
> what you're missing is that DMVs are terribly time-wasting, and nobody wants to go to one until it's absolutely necessary
That's a fair point. When a state/territory switches over to a new REAL ID system there is definitely a significant increase in per-customer processing time. After a few weeks the staff is better equipped and a lot of the software issues have been ironed out and they get faster but it may always take a bit more time than before. I've seen cases where a customer had to come back multiple times over the course of a week (due to no fault of their own) to get their license and I've seen cases where they are in and out in a few minutes with license in hand (some states print at their offices, some do factory printing and mail out.)
> Until the federal government makes it a priority to clean up customer-facing bureaucracies at all levels of government they interact with, these sorts of migrations will remain quagmires.
The customer-facing side is the state/territory-run DMVs though. The states have to collect a bit more information to comply with REAL ID but they have nearly all the control over the customer experience. Maybe the federal government could withhold funds for future updates to the systems if states don't meet some criteria for fast processing and better customer service but I won't hold my breath (though that would be great.)