🔒Magubane cuts down DMV wait times

Before Sibongile “Bongi” Magubane officially began her duties as commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Motor Vehicles last April, she saw lines at the DMV’s Wethersfield headquarters going out the door into the parking lot.

After asking around, she found out some of the reasons why: Customers were taken in the order they arrived, so a quick transaction could take hours if people with more complicated tasks were in line ahead. Many people were there after waiting in line a previous time, only to find out they didn’t have the documents they needed. Some people simply didn’t know which line to wait in.

To Magubane, long lines were more than just an inconvenience to people who don’t have the choice to take their business elsewhere.

“The lines were a symptom of the process not working,” Magubane said. “[It was] impacting way more than just the people coming in to do their transactions; it was impacting employees, it was impacting business, it was impacting quality of life, it was impacting safety.”

Since then, Magubane’s prime focus has been shortening the time people spend at the DMV, and the number of people who leave without having completed their transaction.

In about seven months, the former Aetna executive’s policies are achieving noticeable results. The average time a DMV transaction takes dropped from an hour, 17 minutes when she got there to 34 minutes in October, and the percentage of people who leave without completing a transaction dropped from 36 percent to 11 percent.

And she’s just in phase one of a plan to revamp Connecticut’s DMV into an efficient, customer-friendly operation.

Magubane’s first phase was to stabilize and streamline the agency’s systems and processes, by doing things like having employees communicate with customers as they walk in, telling them where they should go and what documents they need, so they don’t wait in wrong lines to find out they have to come back with additional paperwork.

“Maybe it takes somebody new coming in and saying, ‘Hey, can we try this?’ And it worked,” Magubane said.

A Hartford resident, Magubane, 64, served on an advisory panel during Gov. Ned Lamont’s transition, but wasn’t close with the first-term governor, and has never worked in the public sector.

Bringing change to bureaucracy

Magubane’s family settled in Storrs when she was about 15. Her family had first moved to the U.S. from South Africa when she was 9, as her father attended the University of California at Los Angeles. Her family, including three sisters, lived in LA for a while, moved to Zambia for a couple years, and eventually relocated to Storrs, where Magubane’s father was hired as a professor.

After graduating from UConn with a math degree, Magubane worked for Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Co. for three years, followed by a stint at MassMutual, before she was hired as a computer programmer at Aetna, where she’d rise to head of IT strategy over 32 years.

Aetna’s training processes rubbed off on Magubane. One of the first actions she took at the DMV was to change new employee training. Typically, new hires would handle a long line of customers while a more experienced worker watched. Now, new employees go to Wethersfield for a week of training before they hit the floor.

Her focus on cutting down wait times and lines was about more than customer dissatisfaction, too.

“There are a lot of unintended consequences … to having those lines,” Magubane said. “It meant that our employees were not feeling safe, because you’ve got a group of people in the room, it’s hot and there’s anger, and they’ve waited there for an hour, and voila! ‘I can’t finish my transaction!’ ”

Shorter wait times have also enabled branches to close on time at 4 — a key quality-of-life issue for parents dealing with daycare, Magubane said.

Next, she wants to start looking at new DMV services. For example, Magubane sees a future where customers schedule an appointment rather than wait in line, and receive text notifications if their appointment is delayed. Magubane also wants self-serve kiosks at DMV locations for simple transactions.

As she continues her efforts to improve customer service and modernize the DMV, Magubane said she’ll further leverage her corporate-manager skills.

“It’s observation, understanding, getting the facts before you decide, understanding what you’re trying to achieve,” Magubane said. “At the point when you’ve decided ... to do something, do it.”