I hope this finds you all well. With our conference and meeting schedule beginning soon, make sure you check the AAMVA website and mark your calendars appropriately, as I am sure we will have an exciting year.

First, I would like to begin by offering my condolences to the family of Corporal Matthew “Ty” Snook of the Delaware State Police, who tragically lost his life protecting the staff and customers at one of our DMV offices in Delaware. His selflessness assuredly saved lives.

My thoughts are also with Amy Anthony, the entire Delaware DMV team and especially the staff members who lived through those horrible moments.

A Safety and Security Working Group was formed to offer suggestions on how jurisdictions can reduce or minimize risk and improve safety and security for our most important resource—those individuals who provide service to customers on a daily basis.

In light of this incident, it is appropriate that this issue of MOVE features an article on employee safety and security. AAMVA’s vision has been “Safe Drivers, Safe Vehicles, Secure Identities, Saving Lives,” and through our combined efforts, we have published best practices to help us achieve those goals in our respective jurisdictions. But the Board has recognized that we should also focus on developing tools and best practices to better serve our customers and has established the MVA Operations and Customer Experience Committee, chaired by John Marasco, director of the New Hampshire DMV.

As part of the Committee’s work, it was acknowledged that there is a heightened risk of workplace violence. A Safety and Security Working Group was formed to offer suggestions on how jurisdictions can reduce or minimize risk and improve safety and security for our most important resource—those individuals who provide service to customers on a daily basis.

Thank you to all who are participating in this vitally important task; we all look forward to seeing the outcome of your efforts. 

Also timely in this issue is the article “A New Era of Modernization.” It discusses how jurisdictions are rethinking their approach to system upgrades. Rather than developing and building a system with an expected life and then replacing it, the trend now is toward systems that can be continually upgraded and modified.

We replaced our legacy system in Rhode Island in 2017 with a custom-built system using the agile methodology discussed in the article. Our system not only met our expectations and needs at launch, but also gave us the flexibility to adapt to technological changes while adding or improving customer-facing functionality. As of this printing, we will have successfully completed eight major and 71 minor upgrades/releases, and our team has several more planned for 2026!

With system modernization as the topic of the upcoming Pop-Up Classroom in April, this is a great article for those planning to attend the session or who are contemplating a system modernization.

I look forward to seeing everyone in the coming months.