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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Hawaii State Judiciary launches vehicle monitoring system


Russell Castagnaro
Reader Submitted

Honolulu, HI April 18, 2010 The Hawai'i State Judiciary has launched a new online service, which aims to help rental car companies cope with a common problem.

It's a common story. A visitor rents a vehicle for the family vacation in Hawaii. Somewhere during the vacation, the car gets a parking ticket, which is subsequently lost before the car is returned to the rental office. Whether it is an innocent mistake or intentional act, the result is the same. The ticket ends up clogging up the system at the Judiciary and causing major headaches for rental car companies, who end up paying for the citation as the registered owner of the vehicle.

The Vehicle Monitoring System (VMS was codenamed: Kia'i Ka'a Hawaiian for Vehicle Watch) is available to subscribers of eHawaii.gov and provides a weekly report of any vehicles in the subscriber's fleet that have violations from the last 31 days. This will allow the fleet owners to account for citations on their vehicle on a timely basis, not pay penalties for overdue payments on citations and track the responsible party. Emailed and online reports are an integral part of VMS.

VMS was developed by Hawaii Information Consortium, LLC (HIC) at no cost as part of the eHawaii.gov initiative in partnership with various state and county agencies. Subsequent releases of VMS will include: notification of 'stoppers' or blocks placed in the system that must be removed before a renewal can be processed; payment of violations; vehicle tag renewal and decommissioning of vehicles.

HIC General Manager Russell Castagnaro said, "We think that VMS will be big win for everyone: Rental car companies and fleet vehicle owners can focus on their business and not get distracted by paper violations that might otherwise take a lot of time and labor to deal with and the courts will be able to process the violations more quickly."

Hawai`i's official Internet portal, ehawaii.gov, is managed by the Hawaii Information Consortium, LLC (HIC). HIC works with state and county agencies to enable them to conduct government business online and improve public access to government information.

Subscribers can access VMS at http://vms.ehawaii.gov and learn more about Hawai`i online services at http://www.ehawaii.gov.

About eHawaii.gov

Hawaii's official Internet portal, http://www.eHawaii.gov, is managed by Hawaii Information Consortium, LLC, a Hawaii corporation and wholly owned subsidiary of eGovernment firm NIC Inc. (NASDAQ: EGOV). Hawaii Information Consortium works with Hawaii state and county government agencies to enable them to conduct state business online and improve public access to government information.

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