CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles wants to transition to a cloud based system Officials with the agency were before the House Finance Committee Tuesday to explain the plans and costs associated of the planned upgrade.
“The current drivers’ system has served the agency well, but it is now outdated and struggling to meet the demands of modern operations,” said DMV Commissioner Everett Frazier.
Frazier recalled a system wide outage in recent months which crippled the entire agency and said this was the solution to keep it from happening again.
“When this is down it doesn’t just affect the drivers licensing system, you have to realize who uses your drivers license; State Police, Fusion Center, FBI, CIA, so we have to keep this functioning,” he added.
The plan is to contract with a company who would migrate the legacy data from the current system over to the new cloud system. Evan Dewey, the Deputy Business Manager for the West Virginia Department of Transportation explained the process of implementing the new system would take a couple years. The vendor would then manage the system with all appropriate upgrades to security and software for ten years after that.
“We implement this and after those two years, you’re really paying for the hosting, maintenance, and really any other development that needs to be done,” said Dewey.
He added, it’s a reasonable cost and one which they’ll have to bare regardless of what system is in place.
“Instead of employing Millions of dollars worth of employees, it would be through these vendors that at any moment if something goes wrong, they fix the issue,” he explained.
The total projected cost over 12 years would be roughly $48 Million. The agency is seeking $3.5 Million in a supplemental appropriation this year, but would fold in the cost in subsequent years into the DMV’s annual budget request.
The House Finance Committee took no action on the bill, but is expected to take up the request later this week.