MRS drives Tasmanian vehicle registration into 21st century
Client: Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources (DIER), Tasmania, Australia.
Challenge: Replace a 30 year old legacy Motor Registry System (MRS) with a flexible user-driven system that improves customer service, supports inter-agency access, can meet emerging business requirements and fully technically links to the National Exchange of Vehicle and Driver Information System (NEVDIS).
Solution: As prime contractor and systems integrator, CSC saves time and money and reduces risk by tailoring a proven CSC-developed vehicle and driver licensing system to DIER’s needs after extensive user consultation.
Results: The new, web-enabled Motor Registration System (MRS) makes it quicker and easier for users, customers and other government agencies such as Police, Justice, Service Tasmania and Treasury to access the information they need. MRS improves data quality, fully links Tasmania into NEVDIS and has the flexibility to meet future business and reporting requirements.
Read the full case study (PDF 249KB)
Learn about our Systems Integration services.The Tasmanian Government recognised that its Motor Registry System (MRS) no longer met the existing or future business needs of government. They wished to develop a more user-centric, flexible and accessible system. The Department of Infrastructure Energy and Resources worked with CSC to adapt a solution based on the system that CSC had already developed and implemented for the ACT Government.
Rapid, cost-effective yet tailored solutionMotor vehicle registration, driver licensing and associated services are a major revenue generator for the Tasmanian Government. The outdated COBOL-based technology meant that the MRS did not have the technical flexibility to meet existing or expected business requirements. Tasmania was the last jurisdiction that was not fully linked technically to the National Exchange of Vehicle and Driver Information System (NEVDIS). The ‘old’ system was ‘green screen’ and users took a long time to become proficient with it. When the government recognised that the MRS had reached the end of its servicable life it was clear that decisive action was needed.
Following the approval of a Business Case, the Tasmanian Government undertook a robust selection process for the development of a new Motor Registry System.
As a result, a CSC-led consortium was engaged to adopt and adapt rego.act, a licensing and registration system that CSC had developed for the Australian Capital Territory. This approach offered significant cost and time savings and less risk than building a new system.
Extensive consultation
When developing the MRS, the CSC consortium adapted rego.act to support Tasmania’s business requirements. CSC and DIER undertook a thorough analysis of the associated business rules in order to identify the ‘fit’ of rego.act to the Tasmanian requirements.
User involvement was a priority. Moving from the ‘old’ MRS to a ‘new’ MRS would change how people worked and CSC had first-hand experience of the value that user consultation made when implementing rego.act in the ACT.
The Tasmanian Government established an independent project group to work with the CSC consortium. As prime contractor, CSC was strongly committed to end user consultation, including this in the project’s governance model. The project plan included workshops to determine DIER’s business requirements. Regular meetings were held to ensure the system met those needs using a transparent reporting system, and an emphasis on a collaborative working relationship between consortium members and DIER.
“The relationship between CSC and DIER at the project management level was built on trust,” said DIER’s MRS Project Director. “The building of a sound working relationship enabled various difficult situations to be worked through in a collaborative approach.” The new system’s Java platform meant staff feedback could be incorporated into elements such as screen order, page layout and work process support. It also allowed user education to take place as the system was developed, reducing disruption and changeover costs.
Enormous data migration task
The data held in the original Tasmanian MRS had been collected over many years and initially some data was collected under a different regulatory environment. The standards, processes, data labelling and formatting all required transformation to allow the data from several different systems (including Oracle and Access databases in a COBOL environment) to be migrated into the new system. As a result, migrating the data into MRS was very complex. It involved formatting 42 tables, managing more than 20,000 function points and producing millions of lines of code.
A more flexible, accessible system
MRS went live in 2008, handling all aspects of motor vehicle and driver licensing for the Tasmanian Government and providing many benefits.
• The new MRS is ‘client centric’ which means that all information is linked to the person rather than to separate licences or vehicles. This significantly improves customer communications • DIER’s compliance requirements are fully supported • The MRS can be upgraded to support future business requirements • Data quality is better, with data collected in a more systematic and comparable way • Inter-agency access to information has improved as MRS is integrated with police, judicial, financial and license production systems.