George Valverde, DMV Director

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If it’s not careful, the Department of Motor Vehicles may soon shed most of the stereotypes Californians have of the agency.

Long detested by drivers for its long lines and seemingly soulless bureaucrats, the agency in the last three years has reduced waiting times, improved customer service and even increased the number of organ donors in California. Much of that has been achieved simply by moving more services online.  

George Valverde, the DMV’s director since April 2006, says the agency will continue to push more and more of its business out of the offices and onto the internet. “We want to be able to provide a new (online) feature to the public every 120 days,” Valverde says. “We think that’s something to keep it fresh — so the public is aware there are new services available to them.”

For example, motorists can register vehicles, renew driver’s licenses, calculate fees owed, buy personalized plates and make appointments online. They can also go online or use the telephone to check the current real-time waits at nearby DMV field offices.

NO LONGER DRIVING US CRAZY

The change has resulted in some fairly dramatic statistics.

Four years ago, the average wait time at DMV field offices was close to an hour (at times, the average in some locations was as high as four hours), and it was projected to reach an average of 80 minutes by 2005 if no changes were made. But thanks to the online efficiencies and the hiring of at least 400 extra field staffers in 2004, the average wait time had been reduced to nearly 16 minutes by early 2007.

In 2005, the DMV website processed fewer than 3 million services. By the end of 2007, Valverde expects that figure to surpass 5 million. In July 2007, nearly 500,000 people registered vehicles online, the department’s highest single month ever.

Besides the additional online services,  the DMV now takes a triage approach to routing customers who visit one of its offices — identifying their needs from the beginning, making sure they end up in the correct line and opening more windows or shifting employee duties if the customer load becomes too heavy. This involves an electronic queuing system that has slowly been expanded since the late 1990s.

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