Rhode Island sues HPE for making its DMV even more miserable

The US state of Rhode Island is suing Hewlett Packard Enterprise over a car-crash IT project to overhaul its vehicle licensing system.

In a lawsuit [PDF] filed to the State Superior Court on Tuesday, the Rhode Island Department of Revenue and Department of Administration accused the enterprise giant of breaching contract on an IT project that is more than six years overdue.

That project, launched in 2007, sought to overhaul a decades-old vehicle licensing system known as the Rhode Island Motor Vehicle Licensing System, or RIMS for short. Originally slated to be completed in 2010, the project to replace RIMS has been extended and amended a number of times and the state estimates it has paid HPE more than $13.2m in the process.

"While certain aspects of the RIMS System are nearly complete, other aspects are far from completion. A number of critical interfaces that will allow the DMV to communicate with other state and federal agencies and third parties and are required to make the RIMS System fully functioning have not been completed," the state argues.

"In addition, the data migration required to move data from the current legacy system to the RIMS System is not complete or functional. Significant and critical testing necessary to have a fully functional RIMS System is also not complete."

HPE, meanwhile, argues that it has already completed the original agreed-upon part of the project and will not do any work until Rhode Island agrees to pay $12m in additional fees it owes for the RIMS deal.

"HPE has met all contractual obligations with the State of Rhode Island and has made a substantial effort to reach a fair resolution of the dispute under the RIMS contract," an HPE spokesperson told The Reg.

"Given the progress that has been made by both parties, it is unfortunate the State has derailed this project by being unwilling to pay for additional work that the State requested and HPE performed. HPE is now forced to pursue legal remedies to recover compensation for its work."

Rhode Island counters that it did not approve any additional work, and that HPE is trying to bill it for extra services the company should have completed under the original deal.

The state government is asking its court to award damages and, more importantly, issue a restraining order to force HPE to complete the RIMS work and hand over all source code, configuration information, and software details involved in its operation. ®