As I reported in my first blog post, DVLA has started to look at how we can deliver digital services to allow users to let DVLA know about changes to their vehicle. These include when you have bought or sold a vehicle, wish to transfer a personalised registration to a new vehicle, or when something has changed on your record for example a change of address. DVLA receives over 20million of these applications annually and the volume keeps growing year on year. This makes up around 15% of all our transactions so is a significant number.
Designing a digital service for one user type would be a challenge but there is no typical motorist. There is the private individual, the company car driver, the fleet manager, the road haulier, the transport company, the public sector, the number plate dealer, the motor trader. The list goes on. We need to design services that meets all of these user needs, so we are taking a different approach to how we develop our new digital services. There are three main differences:
- firstly, we’re looking at our different customer types and what they need from the service. We’ll do this through insight, customer journey mapping and talking to our customers and stakeholders. This will be continuous throughout the service design and development process
- secondly, we’ll look at our current paper based processes. We’ll look at what works, what doesn’t and how things can be improved for the user. We won’t digitise the current processes exactly as they are. We’ll re-design them around user needs to make things simpler and quicker
- lastly, we’ll deliver the services using an agile and iterative approach
What does this mean?
Quite simply we won’t try to deliver the vehicles digital services all at once. Not only would this be a tough ask but it increases the risk of us getting it wrong. Instead, we’ll develop one of the services quickly, test it with users, improve it, test it with more users, improve it again, and then launch it. Even when its launched we’ll implement a process to ensure we can react quickly to user feedback. As we prove capability with one service, we’ll roll out this approach to the other vehicle services.
So where are we now?
We’ve completed a discovery phase with the support of GDS colleagues. We’re now in the process of starting an ‘inception’ to understand the full scope of this work, and then an alpha to prove our capability and to develop a working prototype. In the coming months, I’ll be in a position to report on what services we’ll be looking to digitise first and when. I’ll also use the blog to keep you updated on the progress of the development.