Louisiana’s governor announces new IT vendor on his diner-themed podcast

Sitting at a table surrounded by Tabasco bottles and plastic Coca-Cola cups, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said, “Wow.” The governor listened as Bryan Adams, the state’s fire marshal, described how an aging computer system inside the state Office of Motor Vehicles that last year went down for 60 days now blinks out for “15 or 20 minutes” only “once or twice a week.”

Adams, a former state representative who additionally serves as principal assistant for Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety Services, was tasked by the governor to fix the five-decade-old system used for issuing driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations. The two reviewed the details of the project from inside Phil’s Oyster Bar & Seafood Restaurant in Baton Rouge, surrounded by framed Kentucky Derby memorabilia and neon signs, but not other customers — the governor’s Diner Days podcast is recorded privately.

Landry has made numerous announcements in recent weeks about the improvements his administration has made to the OMV’s failing IT system. To the uninitiated, such projects could seem dull, but such IT failures can infuriate the public and suck the life out of public servants. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in 2019 told the press that the beleaguered (and expensive) project to upgrade his state’s driver’s licensing and vehicle titling system was keeping him up at night. During the podcast, Landry called the system outages in his state “a nightmare.”

Adams used the governor’s platform to announce that last week his office selected the Cleveland, Ohio, software company Champ Titles as its vendor to replace the OMV system, a project he estimated will take about 12 months for the driver’s licensing component, and 18-24 months for the vehicle registration part. Adams agreed with his governor that the recent fixes were only “a Band-Aid.”

“I like to say we put Gorilla Tape on it, not duct tape, because it needed Gorilla Tape, and we got that fixed,” Adams said, referencing a product marketed to be three times stronger than ordinary duct tape.

Adams said Champ beat out two other vendors because it offered a lower price of $30 million, compared to the $58 million Landry’s office said the state would have paid Fast Enterprises, another vendor that was considered.

The upgrade is scheduled to begin in the second week of August, Adams said, noting that the office routinely serves about 3 million of the state’s 4.6 million residents — “Brand new system. It’ll be the greatest thing the state has seen in 50 years, if you will,” Adams said. The governor mentioned more than once he hoped the new system would provide an experience on par with that of Disney World.

The Diner Days episode with Adams was the seventh the governor’s office has published since the show appeared on YouTube two months ago.

Other guests have included political journalist and radio host Jim Engster, and Madison Sheahan, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy director, who told a story about a hunter shooting a 700-pound black bear — “It was a huge accomplishment,” she said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president’s Health and Human Services secretary, appeared on an episode to discuss waivers for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that restrict it from funding the purchase of unhealthy foods like soda and candy.

The announcement of the new system’s vendor follows another announcement, made earlier this month, that the state’s digital identity app had been approved by the federal government for entering federal buildings or passing through airport security, a development Landry was sure to mention again with Adams.

In his podcast, Landry adopts a format found in much of new media, hopping between topics and blending the informal with the serious. In another episode, also hosted at Phil’s Oyster Bar, the governor mentions that the establishment had been featured in Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, a the Food Network show hosted by Guy Fieri.

The Adams episode ends with Landry mulling the possibility of next inviting a teacher onto his podcast, before he seems to take on the role of a Food Network host himself, suggesting the two enjoy some oysters together.

“You know with school season, when school starts, you know what else that means?” Landry asked his guest. “Football season’s getting ready to start. So footballs and oysters. I can’t think of anything more funner than that.”