Chapter 4: Real I.D.

Initiated in 2005, the Real I.D. program was established in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The U.S. Congress passed the Real I.D. Act to ensure that individuals boarding planes or entering federal facilities were properly identified. The federal security mandate set stricter standards for driver's licenses, requiring that all U.S. states and territories follow a consistent and rigorous process to re-authenticate credential holders. Real I.D. was an upgraded driver's license or identification card that required extra steps to validate the holder's identity and residency. This process provided a high degree of confidence that the individual was who they claimed to be, and resided where they stated. After many delays, the Real I.D. requirement for air travel was initially set to take effect nationwide in October 2020. (The federal enforcement date was subsequently moved to May 7, 2025.)

When Real I.D. was first introduced, each state had to determine how to meet the Department of Homeland Security requirements, which mandated that residents provide two forms of identification and two proofs of residence. “When the Real I.D. process was launched, the federal government published strict requirements, but didn't really explain how agencies might go about actually implementing it,” Gordon explained. 

To make the process even more complex, the newly designed Real I.D. application process could not be fully completed by customers online, since the need for a physical signature necessitated an in-person visit to a DMV field office. This posed an immense logistical challenge for the department: The DMV needed to issue Real I.D.s to tens of millions of Californians within a tight timeframe. 

The lack of clarity around the U.S. government's implementation instructions also led to inconsistencies across California's 180 DMV field offices. DMV headquarters staff, responsible for developing implementation policies, did not have a clear understanding of how the rules should be applied. As a result, headquarters staff added various administrative steps—like cosigning applications to indicate that they had been reviewed by multiple team members—to the process, based on heightened concerns about fraud. This led to an overly complicated and time-consuming process for both DMV employees and California residents.

During some of the first appointments, applicants would frequently stand at the counter, largely idle, while DMV representatives performed a number of time-consuming administrative procedures. Gordon observed this inefficiency firsthand during his field visits, noting that customers often stood around checking their phones confused about the lengthy process unfolding before them. In 2019, as a result of a process that was unclear and inconsistent, California’s Real I.D. transaction process (total time at the counter being served by a staff member, excluding wait times) took an average of 28 minutes per applicant. And for Gordon and his team, this wasn't acceptable.

To reduce these burdens, Gordon and his team set out to use technology and process improvements to eliminate as many in person visits to field offices as possible for transactions that didn’t require physical signatures. This meant customers could spend less time at the offices during the visits they were required to make to obtain a Real I.D.

Vignette 4: Reduce visits to the field offices

As a first step, the team aimed to reduce visits to field offices. To do this, Gordon, alongside Gupta, DMV's chief digital transformation officer, focused the department's technology budget on increasing the availability of DMV services through web and mobile channels. They focused on developing mobile-first services for the most common transactions, like renewing a license or registration. “It's critical for the DMV to be where the customers are. They need to be able to reach our services from any place, from any device,” Gordon explained. Gordon also highlighted the need to simplify services to ensure they could be delivered reliably on mobile devices, removing unnecessary complications that had been built into the system over the years. By implementing platform-as-a-service infrastructure and building off existing systems like Salesforce, the DMV aimed to modernize its technology infrastructure without the need to build underlying systems from scratch. 

Gupta’s leadership and expertise were instrumental to the development of these technologies. “With Ajay, I learned that he has an amazing ability to assess a situation: our systems, their architecture, key players, etc. and plot a course using a combination of short- and long-term strategies to get us to our destination. This was especially critical during the height of COVID,” Gordon explained. 

On top of the investment in the quality and availability of online services, the DMV expanded its service channels by installing self-help kiosks in high foot-traffic locations, such as Safeway and other supermarkets across California. This strategy further reduced the need for in-person field office visits by bringing common DMV services closer to where customers already were, in a format that was low cost, flexible, and quick to set up. Gordon explained, “There's no reason not to have kiosks at places like a grocery store. The kiosks can pop up very quickly, and we can serve customers without them having to come to a DMV field office.” 

The kiosk strategy also provided opportunities to quickly test demand for services in new neighborhoods. In one instance, the department placed a kiosk that accepted cash in Calexico, a city with a higher prevalence of cash transactions. The move proved successful, as Gordon noted: “Our Calexico customers love it. Now they don't have to travel to El Centro, which is a 15-mile drive.” This approach allowed the department to evaluate service needs in specific markets while improving accessibility for customers in more remote areas.

By 2024, the DMV had more than doubled the number of online services, from 20 in 2019 to 50. There were 287 DMV kiosks available statewide. Many transactions that had previously required an office visit could also be started online and completed with the assistance of a virtual agent. Californians completed more than 27 million online transactions in 2023, compared to 18.7 million in 2019.

Vignette 5: Redesigning the Real I.D. process

To directly address the lengthy 28-minute Real I.D. transaction, Gordon led the team through a systematic evaluation and simplification of the entire process. The team studied a “Value Stream Map” (VSM) that outlined the process flow of steps involved in the application process, and interrogated the rationale and legislative necessity of each part. Gordon explained: “28 minutes was the average in-office cycle time for a customer. So we attacked the value stream map looking for non-value-added tasks to strip them from the process. We challenged every one of those steps. Does it come from a statute? A regulation? A policy? Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea?” This rigorous examination allowed the team to identify and eliminate unnecessary steps, and start the process of creating a newer, faster and more efficient customer experience.

Throughout the process of working with his team—many of whom had been with the DMV for many years—Gordon used his outsider status and relative inexperience with government and the legal intricacies of the vehicle code to his advantage.

The Real I.D. application initially involved a cumbersome paper-based process to review and confirm the accuracy of customer data. Customers were presented with six half-sheets of paper containing their information, which they had to review for accuracy and sign. These papers were then collected, bagged, and mailed to Sacramento to be scanned and then destroyed. “That's a lot of trips for that paper,” Gordon exclaimed.

To streamline the process, Gupta and his team implemented a digital e-signature and document-review system on mobile tablets. The team also successfully argued that a digital signature was equivalent to a physical signature on the form, convincing policy and legal departments to relax the requirement for an in-person, pen-and-ink signature.

To make visits more efficient still, the team launched a raft of additional technology-enabled features. Driven by Gupta, the department introduced document-recognition capabilities, machine vision, and optical character recognition (OCR) technology into the DMV's web and mobile apps. “Customers can now take a photo of their documents with their phone,” Gordon explained. This system quickly validated documents, and informed customers within seconds if their documentation was approved and sufficient, or if they needed to provide alternative proof of identity or residency. This pre-validation step increased the efficiency of in-office appointments, and the likelihood that customers would complete the entire process in one visit.

Furthermore, the DMV implemented a process to transfer this pre-validated customer information to local field offices ahead of customers' appointments. Gordon explained, “When you show up, we already have the information you scanned. And so it's really shortened the cycle time at the office because the agent who's working with that customer is already looking at the documents that are already approved.” This streamlined approach dramatically reduced processing time at DMV offices, enhancing both customer experience and operational efficiency.

Vignette 6: Outlier experiences and post-pandemic pressures

Despite the improvements in the process design of many of the most common services, visits to the DMV could still severely frustrate customers. These outlier ordeals were known to occur, but were managed according to their severity and frequency. “We're evolving to be a root cause organization. We try to assess how customers get wedged in long, drawn-out experiences with the department, and when and if we should do anything about a given situation. Some issues have enough volume to merit seeking a fix, and for the others we just fix upon failure, as they occur,” Gordon noted.

In 2018, average customer wait times across all field offices in California to see a DMV representative without an appointment were above one and a half hours. In 2021, this time fell to as low as 13 minutes. Wait times with an appointment fell from 22 minutes to as low as 7 minutes over the same period. 

Wait times started to rise again in late 2023. According to DMV leadership, this was a direct result of a reduction in state funding for the Real I.D. initiative and a corresponding loss of around 1,000 frontline positions statewide. To address this constraint, Gordon and his team took measures to further reduce the burden on in-person field offices by restricting the access of many of the most requested services to online channels only. “We continue to look for ways to reduce the need for an office visit and also recently stopped providing the simplest services in office. For example, Californians can no longer complete simple vehicle registrations, driver's license renewals, replace a driver's license or registration card, or request a driver's license or vehicle record in an office. These are all services that can be accomplished without an office visit,” Anita Gore explained.

The increase in wait times is also driven by a return to normal following extraordinary circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic. “DMV offices were closed for a couple months during COVID, which forced many customers to go online. Unfortunately, many Californians reverted back to their original behavior of coming into an office,” Edward Swenson noted. “In 2020, 2021, and 2022 seniors aged 70 or above could renew their driver's license online due to an executive order. That population—around 12 percent of our total customer base—can no longer renew online and now have to come in person again.”

Despite these outliers and post-pandemic pressures,  metrics tracked by the California DMV show that customers who visited field offices in 2023, on average, had far better experiences than in 2018. As a result of the numerous measures put in place to increase the quality, speed and efficiency of in-person appointments, customer satisfaction scores —measured across all field offices— had risen from an average of 2.5 out of 5 to around 4.25, since measurement began in 2018. Gordon noted: “When you look at our field office user satisfaction scores, they tell me that the improvements we've made have made a real difference. It paints a very clear picture, and we're really proud of how far we've come.”