IT'S a Tech Podcast Firewall Chat: DMV DRIVES, featuring Andrea Rohan, DCT

Welcome to the first IT’S a Tech Podcast firewall chat! This shortform series will allow us to focus on specific people, projects and progress that are moving technology forward for New York State government.

On today’s episode, Andrea Rohan, the Deputy Commissioner for Technology for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, talks about the recent launch of the DRIVES application, including how this change will make the DMV experience even better for all New Yorkers.

Thank you for listening to the IT’S a Tech Podcast. For more information about ITS, visit our website at its.ny.gov. Follow us on X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Transcript

0:00
 You're listening to a Firewall Chat, part of a miniseries of the IT'S a Tech Podcast spotlighting the talented professionals that make the mission and vision of ITS possible.

 0:10
 Welcome to the first IT'S a Tech Podcast Firewall Chat.

 0:14
 This short-form series will allow us to focus on specific people, projects and progress that are moving technology forward for New York State government.

 0:23
 On today's episode, Andrea Rohan, the Deputy Commissioner for Technology for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, talks about the recent launch of the DRIVES application, including how this change will make the DMV experience even better for all New Yorkers.

 0:39
 So this past February, ITS achieved an amazing accomplishment with a large release in partnership with DMV called the DRIVE System.

 0:47
 The DRIVE system was a cutover from legacy systems over a long weekend that entailed hundreds of staff members, both on the ITS and DMV side, hundreds of tasks that had to be executed over that weekend, as well as several integration points.

 1:03
 Although the weekend really was amazing and and the work that the team did was outstanding, really the work that went into the preparation to make that happen was not by accident, but by design.

 1:15
 The team spent hundreds of hours over the last year working on what the legacy systems looked like, including the data, what the business function looked like, working with DMV to tease out the requirements and do a lot of data cleanup to ensure that when we got to the cutover weekend that all the data was as clean as possible.

 1:36
 The data transition processes were as tight as possible and efficient and ensuring that the applications that were left behind were going to run as smoothly as they did prior to cutover weekend.

 1:48
 Andrea talks more about what this program does and how it will help New Yorkers looking for services at the DMV.

 1:55
 So what the drive system does is really brings what was previously disparate legacy systems and brings them all together into one centralized platform that provides seamlessness from a DMV office perspective and providing services to New York as well as providing additional online transactions to the citizens of New York.

 2:16
 The rollout in February is actually part of a two-phase rollout.

 2:21
 So the this initial rollout really focuses on the driver's licenses and drivers of New York State as well as non driver ID's and other functionality associated with that.

 2:31
 The secondary release that's scheduled for 2028 will take care of the remaining parts that are associated with driver's records related to registration.

 2:42
 Changes to the system and modernizing the technology that previously was a legacy form now allows for quicker changes to further meet needs as the needs of New Yorkers change.

 2:53
 Allows DMV to quickly enhance any applications and new features that might be required from a legislation perspective, which is really cost efficient for the state.

 3:03
 As well as keeping the technology updated and upgraded helps prevent any kind of security concerns and risks to New Yorkers' data.

 3:10
 She talks a bit more about why this change is happening and the challenges that arose along the way.

 3:16
 Working through this modernization effort with DMV is really the age of the legacy platforms.

 3:23
 Several of these systems were over 40 years old, which means a lot of the data was also very different from 40 years ago to what's required today or what might be needed today.

 3:34
 So it really required both ITS and DMV to work together in a partnership to understand what was required for the data to transition over for the new system, what might be required for the data that's being left behind.

 3:46
 And ensure again, that there's seamlessness between the transition to the new system as well as the legacy systems that might still exist from here on out until the second rollout.

 3:55
 What's actually wild is the taking some of these super old systems and you know, when you go through the normal system development life cycle, you're looking at you're developing, then you're doing unit testing and then you're doing quality assurance from a technology perspective, then you're doing a user testing.

 4:14
 But when you're working with systems that are so old, you know, really kind of every incremental step of that testing or that development, you have to look at a little differently than when you're building something from the ground up.

 4:25
 And things are a lot more sensitive when they're that old, as well.

 4:27
 So it's a, it's really interesting.

 4:30
 Andrea recounts phase one of the rollout, which took place over a weekend in February.

 4:35
 So over a go-live weekend, which was covering a 48-hour period of time where we shut down systems from the legacy side on a Friday evening and had to make sure everything was up and ready to go by Monday morning to start the initial phase of testing.

 4:52
 That testing required engagement from some counties later in the afternoon.

 4:57
 So the visibility was really important to get it right.

 5:00
 Teams worked together across both DMV and ITS and ensuring that we had tasks to cover every step of the cutover, whether it be turning down a legacy piece of the application, turning on an API to connect with the new system in production, and making sure everything was flowing from beginning to end state before it got in front of users.

 5:20
 Earlier in the week when the initial system testing started. Offices were going to reopen on the Wednesday following that week.

 5:29
 So there was a very little time to not have things flowing accurately without impacting both how the offices operate normally as well as the public coming in both into the office as well as using DMV websites to conduct their transactions.

 5:44
 And what I think was the most amazing, aside from the scale and the number of of the tasks and integration points and all the things technologically speaking, was really the way the team delivered in both the actual technology, but also professionally and, and how they conducted themselves, how they work through problem points, both again with the dedicated team, the shared service teams at ITS but also with DMV.

 6:11
 Change is not easy for anybody.

 6:13
 So working through a tight time frame with significant change and you know, a few hiccups along the way can be challenging, but everyone remained professional, remained calm and got the job done.

 6:25
 Also, you know, the year leading up to transitioning billions of records is no short feat.

 6:31
 And being able to do so again in that tight time frame, which again normally is under the covers is very challenging.

 6:38
 But the team rose the occasion got things done timely and efficiently, and that Friday evening into Saturday morning, it went off without a hitch.

 6:45
 Andrea reflects on lessons learned from the overall go-live process for this program launch.

 6:51
 It's hard to reflect on lessons learned when there's so many things that were amazing.

 6:56
 Sometimes it feels like lessons learned can can seem critical.

 7:00
 And so I would, I would think on the positive, I think a lessons learned is preparing specifically with tasks that are detailed that do have clear owners, a clear communication plan really helps at moving forward.

 7:16
 You know, I think there's one thing that we learned that we'd like to do differently going forward is ensuring that we have those tasks captured in a way that's easily updatable.

 7:26
 We were using basically an Excel spreadsheet because it was the easiest thing to get things together and, and be flexible go-live weekend and folks didn't require special licensing or anything like that.

 7:38
 But if we had something that could be a little more flexible, you know, for real-time updates because there was at some points, you know, several people updating 1 task or one row at the same time for their particular piece.

 7:52
 I can't emphasize enough the communication both in the emails or Teams or having a stand-up Webex available if there a bridge was required and we did need that, you know, on a Saturday or I'm sorry, Sunday morning, having those all predetermined.

 8:09
 So distribution lists are predetermined.

 8:11
 There was no thinking in that regard.

 8:14
 You know, we weren't thinking about the administrative things to get how we were going to communicate out that we had the plan for it.

 8:20
 You know, so when we needed to communicate is because we had something that we really needed to get out to the different members of the team, whether it was on the ITS side or the DMV side.

 8:30
 I mean, I think that was really helpful.

 8:32
 And so I I think something large scale like this, it might be easy to forget about the communication plan because it seems very administrative in nature.

 8:39
 But I think it really helped with making things seamless because everybody was on the same page and knowing when to expect communications, who to send things to and that sort of thing.

 8:49
 After a job well done, Andrea reflects back on the accomplishments of the team.

 8:53
 So I really want to give them a moment to shine and like, look what we did.

 8:57
 This is amazing.

 8:57
 Even when it started off really rough, you know, so, so that's why I wanted to come across like, like, I like the all hands call.

 9:05
 I wanted to come across like really showing the team like you guys did an amazing job.

 9:10
 It's not just me saying it, other people are going to hear it and say it, you know, that sort of thing.

 9:15
 At the end of the day, all the professionals involved came together to accomplish a much needed update for the DMV, and everyone should be very proud of this accomplishment.

 9:25
 We look forward to continuing to highlight the outstanding work of ITS teams as they strive to make government services work better for the people who need them.