After seven years of trying to modernize its vehicle registration system, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) found that “minimal work” had been done and now would be “a natural breaking point for the project.”

So, on January 31, they fired the contractor, Hewlett-Packard’s HP Enterprise Services.

The two-part $208-million project is just about half finished. A system for issuing new driver’s licenses is operational in the DMV’s 170 field offices and will have the finishing touches applied by year’s end. The state has spent $135 million to date, but won’t be sending HP the final $26 million due on the contract.

The deadline for completion of the registration portion of the project was May of this year.

It is yet another in a long series of technological failures experienced by DMV and the state. The Office of State Controller fired the contractor on its $371-million payroll system upgrade last week, and the court system pulled the plug last year on an ambitious $1-billion project—to replace 70 unconnected legacy systems—after spending $500 million for a system that doesn’t work.

As of May 2011, the state had 70 information technology (IT) projects under construction with a total cost of $7.8 billion.

DMV originally awarded the “IT Modernization” project to Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 2006. The company was bought for $13.9 billion in 2008 by Hewlett-Packard, which hired former gubernatorial candidate and former eBay chief Meg Whitman as CEO in 2011.

The project is a successor to a fabled IT project of the 1990s called “Info/California,” that touted a system which would facilitate vehicle registration renewals, vanity license plate orders and faster service. It was described as an information-dispensing version of an automatic teller machine that would also link up with the Employment Development Department and help people look for jobs.

That project wasted nearly $50 million and never worked. When then-DMV Director Frank Zolin was chastised in hearings by Assemblywoman Valerie Brown—who exclaimed, “I can’t even explain this to people” —he reportedly mumbled, “I’m having a difficult time explaining it to myself.”

–Ken Broder   

To Learn More:

California DMV Cancels IT Modernization Project Contract (by Colin Wood, Government Technology)

Now, DMV Reportedly Halts Major $210 Million IT Project… (by John Thomas Flynn, TechLeader.TV)

Half-Finished $208-Million DMV Technology Overhaul Canceled (by Chris Megerian, Los Angeles Times)

Another State Technology Project Goes Awry; This One Costs $371 Million (by Ken Broder, AllGov)