INDIANAPOLIS -- Some Bureau of Motor Vehicles managers knew well before the agency's July 5 computer upgrade that the new system was plagued with problems, but they glossed over the issues and told employee trainers to do the same, a former BMV worker told 6News.

The computer switch left BMV workers unable to perform some transactions for days, angering customers. The agency still is having difficulty with some services, such as license reinstatements.

---

Video: Ex-BMV Worker: Computer-Upgrade Warnings Went Unheeded
Discussion: Improve The BMV?

---

Larry McKenna, who trained BMV employees to work with the new system until he was fired last month, said problems had been seen during testing and training for two years, but managers would not listen to warnings.

"They were always pushed aside, and they said, 'We'll get to that later. We'll fix that later, and we'll fix that later.' And it never got around to being fixed." McKenna told 6News' Norman Cox on Thursday.

McKenna said he is not a computer expert, but he and other BMV workers could see that the system was not ready for use. He said other trainers were instructed to play down the significance of any problems encountered during training.

"One of the things we were told as trainers is to not talk about it," McKenna said. "When something would come up in the training class -- an issue where we couldn't go through a transaction -- we were told to tell them, 'That's OK in your version. In the branch, this'll work.' "

McKenna said he was fired in June for teaching employees how to work around the problems instead of pretending they didn't exist.

Several BMV employees, speaking to 6News on condition of anonymity, said BMV Commissioner Joel Silverman was told the system wouldn't work. Silverman denied that.

"Nobody said it wasn't going to work," Silverman told 6News this week. "We had specific transactions that we tested and we knew that they weren't quite at the state that we would like them in. But you would never get to the point where you would be fully tested and everything would be exactly the way you wanted it."

When asked if he would have implemented the computer upgrade on July 5 if he'd known that the problems that followed would have occurred, he said, "No, I wouldn't have."

McKenna said he doesn't know whether Silverman was told the system wouldn't work properly. He said he suspects Silverman was given sugar-coated reports about the system.