Picture the scene, it’s your second day in a completely new role and you read an email asking you to write your first blog. What do you do? Well, have a crack at writing one of course! Initially I had no idea what to write about but as my day unfolded, it became apparent I had plenty of things to say.
It might help if I introduce myself, whilst Ryan Davies is the product owner for drivers enquiries I'll be looking after DVLA's vehicle enquiries. Although the work I'll be doing isn't up there on the exemplar pedestal, it's definitely not in the shadows and another important piece in DVLA’s transformation portfolio.
It's day 2 of a three-week inception, I already feel like I've been in a room with Dom Cobb (from the film Inception). My morning has consisted of extracting valuable secrets from deep within me and my team of business subject matter experts sub consciousness. It's been fascinating to understand what enquiries users make against DVLA's records and the reasons why. I'm still amazed that by day 2 we've only scratched the surface, there’s a lot more hard work still to come.
I’ve already come to the conclusion that providing fit for purpose services will be challenging but not impossible. As I'm riding on the coat tails of View Driving Record, Vehicle Management and Personalised Registrations, I'm at an advantage as I can learn from their experiences and apply that learning in order to help with my service delivery.
Over the next few weeks, understanding user needs will be critical. Understanding technical complexity and how I fit into the bigger transformation picture will also be very important. I then have the pleasure of putting these three factors together to help identify and shape what can be delivered into the world of Alpha. Wish me luck!
6 comments
Comment by David Evans posted on
Natalie
Wecome!
Comment by Beta user posted on
Hello Natalie,
Congratulation on the new role, and good luck!
I recently noticed on the Beta service that the site shows you if a vehicle has a current MOT, are there any plans to incorporate more data from VOSA such as the MOT history or mileage? I am aware that this is available as a separate service, but I am certain that its usage must be very, very low as it requires the user to enter obscure MOT/V5C reference numbers that virtually no one has to hand at their computer/mobile.
Keep up the good work!
Comment by Natalie Morgan posted on
Current MOT is a new addition to the Beta enquiry service. Hopefully this information will prove to be useful to motorists when looking up tax and vehicle data. In answer to your query on historic information, strangely enough a representative working with DVSA (formally VOSA) has been in touch recently to explore the possibility of including this information. We've not got into the detail of what this looks like or how it will work but it's definitely something which needs further investigation.
Comment by Beta user posted on
Thanks Natalie,
That sounds really positive and I think merging the two services is the next natural step (for those that are not aware, the current service is at: https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history-vehicle), the vehicle registration number already acts as a unique key across both services so joining them together should be relatively straight forward.
If this does happen, one thing to bear in mind is that the vehicle VIN number will probably want to be truncated to the last 4 digits to prevent assisting criminals in cloning a vehicles details.
Comment by Dealer_Rep posted on
Hi Natalie, is there already in existence or plans for an API version of the service that would enable a car dealer system to automatically pass the registration and make details via a web service to then present the results locally in their system?
Comment by Natalie Morgan posted on
Hi, thanks for your comment. Currently no we don’t have an API for this. However, the focus is very much on getting a platform ready so it’s capable of bringing on board new services. Before we develop any APIs we firstly need to understand what the requirements are e.g. what data items are needed and most importantly why the end user needs that data (what it will be used for). Any data requests need to be cleared by our Data Sharing Team before we can start development. If a request is approved it will be added to the enquiry catalogue of work and prioritised accordingly. More information on Data Sharing can be found here https://www.gov.uk/data-requests-dvla