James48843
07-07-2008, 09:47 AM
GSA to require central vehicle registration, license plate renewal
By TIM KAUFFMAN
Federal Times
June 25, 2008
DALLAS — Fleet managers will be required to renew government-issued license plates every five years and maintain detailed data on who is driving federal vehicles.
There is no central database for identifying who owns the government’s 600,000-plus vehicles and what license plate is assigned to each car. That makes it hard for law enforcement agencies to investigate when a car or tag is lost or stolen.
The new vehicle registration system, being created by the General Services Administration, aims to change that. All federal vehicles will be entered into a Web-based database that can be accessed by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. At the same time, agencies will phase out current government-issued license tags, which don’t expire, and replace them with new tags that have five-year expiration dates.
Some fleet managers briefed on the new system at the FedFleet conference here are worried about the extra workload required to maintain and update vehicle data and keep track of when license tags expire. Many also are upset that the tags they’ve used for years soon will be no longer valid and will have to be replaced at least every five years.
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“Nobody likes this five-year thing,” said Michael Moses, senior fleet specialist at GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy.
Moses said most agencies would have preferred keeping the same license plate for the life of a vehicle, but national security concerns trumped that convenience.
The requirement to enter point-of-contact data for each vehicle also concerned some managers. GSA wants the contact to be either the vehicle driver or the local manager who’s most directly responsible for those vehicles. For cars that are shared or rotated among drivers frequently, that could mean changing the contact information often.
“Mainly it falls back on the agencies to make sure your data is correct. If you want an accurate database, it’s up to you to put the wrath of you-know-who to every vehicle operator to make sure [that] if there’s change in operator, it’s changed,” Moses said.
GSA is moving quickly by government standards to activate the database. Agencies must begin entering data on current vehicles in August, using spreadsheets GSA sent to department leaders last week. In October, new license plates featuring five-year expiration dates will start being issued. By the end of 2009, license plates for all agency-owned vehicles must be destroyed and replaced with new plates. GSA is giving itself until the end of 2010 to change license plates for the 200,000 vehicles it owns and leases to agencies.
“If you just bought a plate six months ago and you’ve got to put a new plate on it, I’m sorry, you’ve got to buy a new plate,” Moses said.
The requirements were developed during the past 18 months by a 15-member interagency working group representing nearly all of the government’s vehicle owners.
Complete story: http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3597337
By TIM KAUFFMAN
Federal Times
June 25, 2008
DALLAS — Fleet managers will be required to renew government-issued license plates every five years and maintain detailed data on who is driving federal vehicles.
There is no central database for identifying who owns the government’s 600,000-plus vehicles and what license plate is assigned to each car. That makes it hard for law enforcement agencies to investigate when a car or tag is lost or stolen.
The new vehicle registration system, being created by the General Services Administration, aims to change that. All federal vehicles will be entered into a Web-based database that can be accessed by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. At the same time, agencies will phase out current government-issued license tags, which don’t expire, and replace them with new tags that have five-year expiration dates.
Some fleet managers briefed on the new system at the FedFleet conference here are worried about the extra workload required to maintain and update vehicle data and keep track of when license tags expire. Many also are upset that the tags they’ve used for years soon will be no longer valid and will have to be replaced at least every five years.
http://federaltimes.com/images/adtab_h.gif
“Nobody likes this five-year thing,” said Michael Moses, senior fleet specialist at GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy.
Moses said most agencies would have preferred keeping the same license plate for the life of a vehicle, but national security concerns trumped that convenience.
The requirement to enter point-of-contact data for each vehicle also concerned some managers. GSA wants the contact to be either the vehicle driver or the local manager who’s most directly responsible for those vehicles. For cars that are shared or rotated among drivers frequently, that could mean changing the contact information often.
“Mainly it falls back on the agencies to make sure your data is correct. If you want an accurate database, it’s up to you to put the wrath of you-know-who to every vehicle operator to make sure [that] if there’s change in operator, it’s changed,” Moses said.
GSA is moving quickly by government standards to activate the database. Agencies must begin entering data on current vehicles in August, using spreadsheets GSA sent to department leaders last week. In October, new license plates featuring five-year expiration dates will start being issued. By the end of 2009, license plates for all agency-owned vehicles must be destroyed and replaced with new plates. GSA is giving itself until the end of 2010 to change license plates for the 200,000 vehicles it owns and leases to agencies.
“If you just bought a plate six months ago and you’ve got to put a new plate on it, I’m sorry, you’ve got to buy a new plate,” Moses said.
The requirements were developed during the past 18 months by a 15-member interagency working group representing nearly all of the government’s vehicle owners.
Complete story: http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3597337