DMV CIO Gets Candid About Collaborating on App With DIR

Texas by Texas, an app under continuing development from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Information Resources, has the potential to better serve Texans as the app’s offerings are expanded.

At Wednesday’s Digital Government Summit in Austin, Wendy Barron, CIO in the IT Services Division of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), sat with Phil Bertolini, senior vice president of e.Republic*, to discuss the challenges and successes of collaboration across government departments.

Texas by Texas, aka TxT, offers customers the ability to apply for or renew driver’s licenses or vehicle registration, among other services. And the departments are continuously exploring new services to offer via the app.

As far as working with the DMV, Barron was candid about the challenges.

“Initially we kind of had some stumbling blocks there,” Barron said, “but we were able to work through that and move the project forward.”

She continued: “It's this new concept where it's a shared application; it's not DMV’s application or it's not DIR’s application. It's ‘our’ application. So you know, this being somewhat of a new program, there was a lot of collaboration with DIR, a lot of feedback.”

Each department carved out its role as the work went on.

“What DIR did was actually marketing, and a campaign around Texas by Texas was part of the project. So we collaborated in that space as well. We engaged and involved our communications department, our business areas, and then collaborated with DIR, with their vendors, to identify roles and responsibility – who's going to lead the charge on the communication, who's responsible,” she said.

Regarding the challenges more specifically, “Our development team, they're used to doing things the way we've been doing them for a while, and so this new concept, and kind of getting thrown in the deep end on an agile project took some getting used to for my team and even for our business area,” the CIO said.

“By the time we got to the latter stages of the project, it was a pretty smooth running machine.”

And Barron is optimistic about the continuing development of the app, and the collaboration between the DMV and DIR.

“For our business area, I think the biggest shift was really that idea, that concept that this is a shared application. I think that was one of the key things that as in my role, I kind of had to continually reinforce that this is a shared application.”

*e.Republic is the parent company of Industry Insider — Texas and Government Technology, among other publications.