Vehicle registration meltdown

Colo. pulls plug on computer for licensing vehicles

Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 3, 2007 at midnight

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Colorado pulled the plug Monday on its new computer for licensing motor vehicles - the fifth computer system dating to the Owens administration to have major problems.

Gov. Bill Ritter's administration halted use of the CSTARS system after reports of four cases in which police officers checking license plates were informed, incorrectly, that the registration was for a different car.

At least one person had his car unjustly impounded, said Maren Ruvino, operations director for titles and registration.

Ruvino said she didn't know if any of the drivers were mistakenly arrested under the presumption they were driving stolen cars.

"We have substantial problems with our computer infrastructure," said Evan Dreyer, Ritter's spokesman.

"CSTARS is one of at least five troubled computer systems the Ritter administration inherited," Dreyer said.

He cited four others, which failed to pay road workers and welfare recipients accurately and failed to track unemployment benefits and voter registration.

Total value of the problem computer contracts: $317 million.

Dreyer said Ritter had heard of this issue during the campaign and hired chief information officer Mike Locatis to fix it.

"We share the frustrations around these failed computer systems and are working hard to solve these problems," Dreyer said. Locatis is evaluating all of the state's computer systems, he said.

The state began using CSTARS last September but has not deployed it to the 64 counties, which issue most license plates and registrations, and continue to use the old system. That's because CSTARS still doesn't do everything the counties need, Ruvino said.

Ruvino said those features should have been designed into the system in the first place, and why they were not is "the $64,000 question."

Ruvino said the old vehicle registration system may have imported bad data from the new CSTARS, but it's being checked now, and a warning has been sent to all law enforcement agencies.

CSTARS is a $13.2 million project built by computer giant Avanade, a joint venture of Microsoft and Andersen Consulting.

The state had racked up expenses of $10.7 million by the end of 2006.

Avanade did not return repeated calls and e-mails Monday.

Roxy Huber, Ritter's director of revenue and overseer of the licensing section, said she decided to halt use of CSTARS as soon she heard about drivers wrongly running into trouble with the law.

"I didn't want to deploy something in 64 counties that would experience the same problems we were experiencing," Huber said.

She is putting out a bid for an outside company to identify the system's problems. She said she expects them to be solved and that CSTARS will not be abandoned, as was done with the computerized voter registration system.

Timeline of troubles

• September 2004: Rocky launch of $223 million Colorado Benefits Management System, developed by EDS. Benefits delayed and eliminated. Counties say CBMS was rolled out prematurely, racking up nearly $20 million in overruns. As of January, it was still sending out incorrect information though the backlog of errors had been reduced.

• December 2005: Secretary of state pulls out of $10 million contract with technology giant Accenture to build a new computer system to track voter registration, citing missed deadlines and nonperformance.

• December 2005: State Labor Department and Accenture terminate $40.8 million computer deal after state accuses Accenture of missed deadlines and poor performance.

• March 2006: Audit finds consistent lack of state oversight of multimillion-dollar contracts in awarding $4 billion annually to private contractors.

• April 2, 2007: State stops using $13 million CSTARS system for processing vehicle title, registration and plates after officers checking plates are incorrectly informed that the plates are registered to other vehicles. Department of Revenue says it will hire an outside contractor to evaluate CSTARS, developed by computer giant Avanade.

• Governor's office says it is evaluating all state computer systems after CSTARS becomes the fifth new system to have serious problems.

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