Then it was probably AAMVA's fault.

Mea culpa.

You see most, if not all, state motor vehicle agencies, use AAMVA's private and secure network (AAMVAnet) to process customer transactions. 

To put this into perspective for you, AAMVAnet processes approximately 3 million DMV transactions per day, and, since being placed into service in 2006, has had no outages! I'm no tech expert, but I am not sure that any newtwork service provider can boast that record.  And AAMVAnet processes 99 percent of transactions in 0.1 second.  That's faster than you can say DMV.

Typical motor vehicle agency transactions across this secure and private network can include the verification of a driver's Social Security number with the Social Security Administration, the verification of a person's commercial driving history, the verification of a vehicle's title history as well as querying the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) National Driver Register (NDR).

And if you live in Arizona, this technical difficulty was a major cause for concern because it was the last date you could register to vote!  But the good news in Ariz., as told to me by the folks who work at the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division, is that ServiceArizona (AZ's online system which uses AAMVAnet) was running again at full strength by early evening.

Now, here's what happened.

On Monday, January 7, 2008, AAMVAnet technical support experienced system problems that impacted the flow of information across the AAMVAnet network and AAMVA staff began communicating and working with its members and vendors to correct the issue.

AAMVA staff worked non-stop with its vendors and its member agencies (state Departments of Motor Vehicles) to identify the cause of the slow down and pledged to continue exploring all possible solutions until this matter was resolved.

This issue was resolved by 9 p.m. ET., Monday January 7, 2008.

Further testing and analysis will continue throughout the week. AAMVA will work to produce a preliminary root cause analysis as rapidly as possible to help prevent future occurrences.

AAMVA will take all necessary measures to ensure the network continues performing at the high service level on which motor vehicle agencies, and the customers they serve, have come to depend.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused motor vehicle agencies in helping consumers transact their DMV business.  And we appreciate your patience.

Until next time, stay safe behind the wheel.

Jason D. King
VP, Public Relations & Information Services
AAMVA
jking@aamva.org