Gov. Tim Walz to scrap Minnesota's flawed car-registration system

Gov. Tim Walz an­nounced Wednes­day that Min­ne­so­ta will scrap its trou­bled car reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem and seek a pri­vate soft­ware alternative, acknowledging the extent of a mas­sive gov­ern­ment failure that has cost the state well over $100 mil­lion.

The cur­rent sys­tem will re­main in place with rou­tine main­te­nance while state gov­ern­ment se­lects a soft­ware ven­dor to im­ple­ment a new tech­nol­o­gy.

Walz in­her­it­ed the trou­bled li­cense and reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem known as MNLARS from his pred­e­ces­sor, form­er Gov. Mark Day­ton. Walz is seek­ing an­oth­er $20 mil­lion above his ori­gi­nal budg­et re­quest of $53 mil­lion for up­grades and fix­es to the cur­rent soft­ware. The ex­tra mon­ey will be­gin the tran­si­tion from the in-house soft­ware — which was rolled out to scath­ing re­views in 2017 after nearly a decade in development — to a pri­vate soft­ware pack­age like that used in a doz­en oth­er states.

The systems' early history included Minnesotans being charged too much or too little for their plates and tabs, repeated systemwide shutdowns and monthslong processing delays. Cities, counties, people who run the license centers as private enterprises, as well as auto dealers and car-insurance carriers all have been burdened by the glitches.

"I'm com­mit­ted to fix­ing" MNLARS, Walz said. "That's why I reached across the aisle to bring peo­ple to­gether to find a so­lu­tion."

Re­pub­lic­ans were in rare a­gree­ment with Walz and pledged to find the ex­tra mon­ey need­ed.

"The gov­er­nor re­al­ly led on this is­sue. He was will­ing to take a new and fresh look at it. This is bold. It bodes well for Min­ne­so­ta," said state Sen. Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, the GOP ma­jor­i­ty lead­er.

Walz sought rec­om­men­da­tions from an in­de­pend­ent re­view led by Rick King, the chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer for technology at Thomson Reuters in Eagan.

King called the MNLARS re­lease in 2017 a "prema­ture and failed roll­out" that was cursed with a key de­sign flaw — once prob­lems em­erged, there was no way to re­turn to the pre­vi­ous sys­tem while the new soft­ware was fixed.

His in­de­pend­ent re­view included doz­ens of inter­views, and visit­s to watch the new soft­ware in ac­tion. He said the group de­ter­mined that the risks of fu­ture fail­ure were sig­nifi­cant, particularly giv­en the need to con­tin­u­al­ly hire con­trac­tors who had no knowl­edge of the sys­tem and would have to be new­ly trained.

"We've learn­ed a lot of les­sons," King said, re­fer­ring to state gov­ern­ment's tech­nol­o­gy pro­cess­es. "Some­times les­sons come with some cost."

Walz said the in­de­pend­ent re­view will be a blue­print for state tech­nol­o­gy up­grades in the fu­ture.

"It's that 12:01 a.m. in September 2017 that I'm really focused on," he said, referring to the system's failed rollout. Walz said he wanted to institute a culture in state government that allows workers to call attention to problems before they metastasize.

He cited a procedure he learned during 24 years in the National Guard that he said should have been used in the weeks leading up to the flawed rollout of MNLARS.

"Anyone can call a 'check fire.' If there was a situation that was viewed as unsafe, everything stopped," he said.