Building Your Own UCR System - Part 2

Unregistered Carriers on 7/22/2009 - 2930
Unregistered Carriers on 7/23/2009 - 2922
Yesterday's Registrations (IL system) - 22 / $2778 (avg $126)

Yesterday, I said that the main reason that States might want to build their own UCR registration system is "control". In fact, my own state falls into that category.

But why would we want to build our own system when, in fact, Indiana has provided a darned good basic solution for all of us?

Before you rush to answer the question for your State, remember that building technical solutions requires resources - money, people, and so on - both for construction of the solution and for ongoing operation and maintenance of the solution. Building solutions costs money - usually more than you think - so your answer needs to be justfied in terms of how much your State is going to have to expend to build and support your new home-grown solution as opposed to taking advantage of the "free" solution provided by Indiana.

Let me say this for the record:

If your State is only going to register carriers that carry in or mail in their UCR applications - and if you can handle the 30-day lag each month while Indiana accumulates your money - then I don't think you need to build your own system. That much work is already done for you and appears to be working quite nicely.

So what are the circumstances under which a State might legitimately want to build their own system?

Next time, we'll take a look at some additional State objectives that might - or still might not - warrant building an individual state system.