Printing of North Carolina driver licenses and identification cards resumed Monday after the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles required the vendor to add new quality controls to its printing process to prevent future errors.

DMV Commissioner Torre Jessup ordered IDEMIA, the vendor that prints and mails the state’s driver licenses, to stop production last Friday after the DMV became aware of printing issues with some licenses.

People who received flawed driver licenses because of the error will receive new, correct licenses by mail at no cost to them. Commissioner Jessup and DMV officials communicated with IDEMIA through the weekend to review IDEMIA’s investigation of the issue and required the vendor to adopt new quality controls.

“We required the vendor to halt printing until we could determine the scope and cause of the printing errors and make sure the problem is fixed,” Jessup said. “The vendor has put in new safeguards and we will continue to watch their work closely.”

After a series of hardware, software and network audits, IDEMIA determined that a networking issue created a discrepancy in the data during the printing process for cards that were printed on Aug. 15. This networking error caused the incorrect birth dates and ghost images to be printed on approximately 2,400 licenses for individuals under 21 years of age.

People whose licenses have errors should:

• Keep their temporary driver’s documents until a new, correct permanent license is mailed to them

• People will not be required to pay for the replacement, as the vendor will cover these expenses

• People do not have to return to a DMV office, as they can mail the incorrect license back to: NCDMV Central Issuance Unit, 3176 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27697-3176

-Submitted article