IN motor vehicles department still reeling from computer upgrade

The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been unable to send out license plate renewal notices in a timely fashion for three months now. The culprit: glitches in the department's computer system, reports the Indianapolis Star.

In one case, the BMV mailed renewal notices to Zoe Burns of Osceola, but the two registrations went to her parents' home even though she hasn't lived there in almost 30 years. "This is the first major problem with receiving registrations," she said. "It's just frustrating."

The bureau's goal is to mail notices 30 to 45 days before renewal deadline but at this point, a BMV spokesman said, the agency did not know how long it would take before it could meet that goal.

The problem stems from a $32 million upgrade to the computer system. The BMV is still cleaning up customer data in the aftermath of the upgrade. In January, 250,000 notices were delayed.

"I can say we've been working very diligently to review data, to get the registrations out to customers as soon as possible," spokesman Greg Cook said. "We're working as hard as we can to make sure the data is accurate."

Cook acknowledged that the agency's computer system had pulled an old address for Burns, rather than her home in the town about 10 miles east of South Bend. "We apologize for that particular situation," he said. "That's one of the things we've been working to clean up, but that obviously escaped us."