The wait is over
BONGI MAGUBANE IS DETERMINED TO FIX THE CONNECTICUT DMV
Apart from the IRS, is there any government agency as universally dreaded as the Department of Motor Vehicles? In Connecticut, things at the DMV hit a notorious low point in 2015, when the department shut down for a week to install a new computer system, and snafus in the reboot triggered days of six and sevenhourlong wait lines. Such is the challenge facing the department’s new commissioner, former Aetna IT specialist and UConn alum Sibongile Magubane.
The DMV’s massive brick headquarters sits amid stately houses in Old Wethersfield, south of Hartford. Magubane, who goes by the resonant nickname of Bongi, greeted me in her office, a large room with walls bereft of decoration. She hadn’t had time, she said — from day one, on April 1, she’d been working nonstop.
I noted that April Fools’ Day might not be the most auspicious date to begin running this state agency, and asked Magubane if she agreed that her new department is the one Connecticut residents spend the most time hating on.
“Absolutely,” she said. “And it doesn’t have to be like that. It is due to circumstances that are fixable.”
If anyone can fix it . . .
Magubane knows something about difficult circumstances. She was born in South Africa during the apartheid era. Forget about registering a vehicle, Magubane had no birth certificate — black babies weren’t issued them. She lived in a twofamily house in a township outside Durban, with no electricity and 12 family members crowded into three rooms. Her father was a university student active in the antiapartheid movement. “My grandmother washed laundry for white people,” Magubane recalled, then chuckled. “Rumor has it that she also brewed beer.”
Her family’s destiny swerved unexpectedly when her father, through a connection in the antiapartheid movement, got offered a scholarship — to UCLA. And so in 1964, at age 9, Magubane boarded a plane to the United States.
“I left South Africa with my English name, Pelegrine. Africans couldn’t use African names when they went to school, so we were baptized with English names.” When the family landed in the U.S., they jettisoned the children’s English names. “My father, that was his first act of defiance. So when I landed in America, I was Sibongile. I was in a new country with a new name.”
Her father, the late Bernard Magubane, went on to get a doctorate in sociology and become a beloved professor at UConn. A celebrated scholar and activist, he was best known for his groundbreaking 1979 book, “The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa.”
Bongi spent the second half of her childhood in California and then in Connecticut, adjusting to being American, learning English by watching TV sitcoms like “Leave it to Beaver.” Her father encouraged a love of reading.
“On Saturdays he would work all morning, come home at exactly 1 p.m., and pile us all in the car for a family day trip.” Bookstores were a frequent destination. “I knew every bookstore between Connecticut and Washington. If he came to my house today, he would see nothing but walltowall books.”
In the fall of 1972, Bongi Magubane enrolled as a 17yearold freshman at UConn, where she majored in math and formed lifelong friendships. One was with Elease Wright who, like Magubane, went on to enjoy a long career at Aetna, where she rose to become chief human resources officer.
“My first impression back then of Bongi was that she was very smart and thoughtful,” Wright recalls. “And straightforward. She’s not pretentious, and she always tells you the truth. She doesn’t sugarcoat.”
That trait should serve her well in the administration of a new governor who, when it comes to the DMV, clearly does not want to sugarcoat. Announcing Magubane’s appointment, Lamont called the department, with its 674 employees and $67 million budget, “overly bureaucratic and arduous,” and introduced Magubane as “a sharp, solutionsoriented thinker with a strong business acumen” who would innovate, cut red tape, and make the agency more userfriendly.
“You’re not going to recognize DMV in four years,” the governor promised.
Do the math
When I asked Magubane what she considers the department’s biggest problem, she answered by citing her own experience as a customer. “A few years ago I came for a registration, and I got here and waited in line, then found out my taxes weren’t paid. And I was like, why couldn’t you have just told me? Tell me what I need to know before I come to you.”
In what other areas of their lives, she asked, do people drive somewhere to transact important business, then fail to accomplish it because they didn’t bring the right piece of paper? She browsed through a sheaf of graphs, charts, and tables.
“This past month we had 119,000 people come through our doors, and 20,000 of them didn’t transact because they didn’t have the right materials.”
Magubane’s IT expertise — “DMV by the numbers,” is how she describes her approach — opens a window on precisely what frustrates people so much about dealing with the agency: information, or the lack of it.
It’s clear that obstacles to better information annoy the commissioner both personally and professionally. In the corporate world she came from, reducing those long lines would be the top priority. “I don’t think we have done that here,” she said.
She illustrated with a story. Since her first day on the job she has vowed not to use the back door to her office but the main door, where she has to cross the wait lines. One morning she approached a man at the end of a long line and learned he was seeking a motorcycle permit. At the counter, Magubane ascertained that he needed to be directed upstairs to a different office to take a test.
“So I say to our agent, ‘Can you give him a number so he can go upstairs?’ He says, ‘No, he has to wait in line.’ I said, ‘But how do you know that the permit test upstairs is backed up?’ He says, ‘I don’t. But the process is to hold him downstairs.’” Magubane went upstairs and discovered that there was no line at all for testing. Motorcycle guy could have gone straight up.
This is the alltootypical kind of DMV frustration that Magubane intends to eliminate. “We need to be meeting people at the door and making sure they have the right information — and if they don’t, getting them out of here as quickly as possible. And we can do a better job communicating before they get here, so that we can actually get it right.”
She has launched an initiative, Know Before You Go, to help ensure that people bring exactly what they need, and is setting what she calls “some very aggressive metrics” for firsttime success rates. The goal is to be less like a bureaucracy and more like a business. “We need to be more like the Apple Store where, as you enter, somebody finds out: What are you here to do? And then directs you to that place.”
Magubane plans other changes and innovations. Moving more transactions online. Developing kiosk machines for state residents who don’t have credit cards. Simplifying forms. Creating a Net Promoter Score to help the department assess how it is doing. Improving the website. Leveraging relationships with partners such as AAA in order to offer people more transactions closer to home. And getting PSAs out to tell about it all.
“We need to be telling people what they need to know. And delivering services 24/7, in the way that people consume them. I should be able to get online and register, then get a text saying, ‘Okay, come on over.’ Restaurants do it — why can’t we? This is all about really meeting people where they are.”
The good stuff
Her ability to move the department in that direction has inspired optimism. Connecticut House Majority Leader Matt Ritter believes that technology can solve a lot of the problems at the DMV, and that Magubane is the right person to lead the effort.
“For the first time, we’re turning to someone with extensive privatesector experience in implementing complex technology upgrades,” Ritter says. “Bongi will bring these skills and her tremendous teambuilding personality to DMV. That is a great recipe for success.”
Elease Wright agrees. She notes that the new commissioner has the rare combination of strategic vision and a grasp of granular details. “I saw this at Aetna, where Bongi helped introduce new financial systems and make significant changes to the HR infrastructure. She’s a problemsolver who always figures out what needs to be done to make a system work more effectively. Bongi also knows how to take a team and hold them to very high expectations, then support them in reaching that goal. She knows how to pull people together.”
The English name that Magubane was baptized with, Pelegrine, means “the traveler,” ironically the name she abandoned when her life’s travels began.
That early childhood in South Africa is more than half a century past, and a world away. But ties remain. Her family still owns the house in the Durban township — an uncle lives there — and Magubane showed me photos on her phone of a small hillside structure at the top of an imposingly steep flight of concrete stairs.
“To this day I have a horrible fear of stairs because of these guys right here,” she said, laughing heartily.
While Magubane likes to say that work isn’t everything, and stresses the importance of the worklife balance for DMV employees, it’s clear that she herself is hardpressed to get away from her job. But she manages to destress. She enjoys hanging with her two Shih Tzu–Chihuahuas, Leo and George. Going to the occasional happy hour with friends. Sharing online articles and jokes with her younger sister, Zine, a sociology professor at Boston College. “I still read a lot,” she told me. “I love really trying to understand what makes people tick.”
The challenge of transforming the DMV promises ample opportunity for that. I asked Magubane what she would like Connecticut residents to be saying about the agency four years from now.
She thought for a long moment. “I’d like them to say that they had a great experience transacting with their government when they needed it the most. My birthday’s tomorrow, my license is expiring, and the DMV was there to say, ‘Hey, here’s your document. And tomorrow you can get into that truck and drive and do your business.’”
The commissioner sighed. “That’s really what we need to be doing here. Give people the information they need to be successful, and get them out of here so they can get on with the rest of their lives.”
“I SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET ONLINE AND REGISTER, THEN GET A TEXT SAYING, ‘OKAY, COME ON OVER.’ RESTAURANTS DO IT — WHY CAN’T WE?”
This story originally appeared in UConn Magazine and was reprinted with permission. Visit magazine.uconn.edu.