DVLA is doing great things at the moment to deliver new digital services. If you’re not aware of what we are doing you can read about it on our blogs. For example viewing your driving record or taxing your car online.
But technology in the world of transport is evolving fast. Innovations like self driving cars, alternative fuel types, the ‘connected car’ and solutions to urban commuting are likely to have huge impacts.
Changing the way cars are manufactured, marketed and sold, changing levels of CO2 emissions, and opening up a world of opportunities for data to be sent from or to vehicles - or the people driving them. And yes, cars are tweeting already, and there is a view that fully autonomous vehicles will be on the roads by 2020 – some say 2017.
Our role is to map these trends against DVLA’s plans and develop some thinking around their impact on our IT systems and services, and how we can exploit these advances in the services we offer.
So far we’ve been basing our work on web based learning and speaking to experts in the field like Anthony Baxendale at MIRA Ltd and Paul Nieuwenhuis at Cardiff University. There are many other organisations and people we’re planning to meet so that we get views from all of the key automotive and transport sectors and hope to build a broad network of contacts to share and shape our thinking and continue our learning.
The research is relatively easy, even if the volume of ‘stuff’ is overwhelming. Much more difficult is assessing how DVLA could be impacted by or impact on the areas we look at.
Over the next couple of weeks we are gathering roadmaps together that set out key forecasts in different sectors, for example take up and evolution of hybrid engine technology and then mapping that onto DVLA’s technology road map. At a lower level we’re also identifying how our data structures, volumes, channels and service offerings might change.
Whilst our focus is primarily on DVLA’s IT, the research spills over into policy areas and into other agencies’ work. So we’re sharing our thoughts with them and seeing how we could work together.
We aim to publish the initial report in September and revise it periodically after that. We would welcome any views, offers of help or suggestions of topics to research further. If you’ve done something similar please get in touch.