How Many DOT Employees? Who's Doing the Work?

Waaayyyyy down at the end of an article which tells us that DOT's goal of 30-day service is not being met for issuance of license plates, there's an interesting statistic:

In 2004, the last year before the new system was in place, the DMV issued 12 million "products" - driver's licenses, license plates, vehicle titles or other documents - with 1.38 million hours worked, or 8.7 products an hour. In 2006, the number of products dropped to 11.75 million and the number of hours worked dropped to 1.3 million, for a rate of nine products an hour.

That tells us that the Department used 80K less hours--or, at 2,080 hours/workyear, the Department had 38 less FTE people on its staff. That's worth checking on...

But the REAL irony is that DOT actually had the nerve to make its "goal" even worse than it was before spending a $zillion or so on new systems. Where plate-issuance used to be about 21 days, the department now has a goal of 30 days.

AND the goal is being met in part because other entities (drivers and dealers) are actually doing the work through on-line access methods.

Great. The taxpayers paid too much for a system that delivers later than ever before even though the taxpayers are doing more of the work.