Like many States, the State of Tennessee went through various attempts to modernize a 40-year-old, batch, mainframe Motor Vehicle System that processes over 6,500,000 Motor Vehicle Registrations per year.
In 2015, the State of Tennessee Department of Revenue and BIS signed a contract to begin implementation of a new, fully integrated, real-time Vehicle Title and Registration System (VTRS). Over the next 24 months, we worked together implementing various pieces of VTRS until it was live, and VTRS became the official system of record. The new system improved transaction processing, resulting in increased efficiency (5:1 ratio), decreased errors, and more robust controls against potential fraud.
On July 1, 2014, during this same time frame, an uninsured motorist was pulled over earlier in the day and cited for not having insurance. Later that same day, the uninsured motorist wrecked and killed James Lee Atwood Jr. Legislators made an immediate push to get an electronic insurance verification system developed and implemented. The State of Tennessee and BIS worked together to develop and implement Electronic Insurance Verification System (EIVS) to reduce the number of uninsured motorist. When EIVS went live in January 2017, 72.79% of Tennessee motor vehicles were confirmed as being insured. As of June 30, 2018, the percentage of registered vehicles with insurance confirmed was 79.28%.
During the same time frame of VTRS and EIVS, the Tennessee Department of Revenue was facing a problem with the old cardboard Dealer Drive-Out Tags. These are the temporary tags dealers would use to put on a car for the customer to drive until the metal plate is assigned and on the customer’s car. The problem with a serialized piece of cardboard is the difficulty to track the inventory and enforce rules with dealerships on how many tags can be issued to each vehicle. In addition, if law enforcement pulled a vehicle over, they would have no idea what vehicle this tag should be on and who the owner is. Therefore, if a Dealer Drive-Out tag was stolen, law enforcement would have a very difficult task of finding out what dealership the tag was sold to.
The State of Tennessee and BIS worked together to develop the Dealer Drive-Out EZ Tag system. This is a website where Tennessee Dealers can log in and issue a temporary dealer drive out tag with a scannable barcode for law enforcement. The new tag information is printed on chemical/weather-resistant paper, thus eliminating the need for the State and dealerships to inventory pre-printed serialized tags. The State also has complete control over how many tags dealers can issue to each vehicle and prevent dealers from selling tags if dealer licenses are expired. In addition, when dealers key the information into the system, law enforcement has immediate real-time access to validate the tag.