Corporate report

DfT's actions in response to the Government Digital Strategy

Updated 16 January 2015

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

Action 1: Departmental and transactional agency boards will include an active digital leader

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

The department’s senior leaders will champion the use of digital in the workplace, leading by example. The department’s digital leader will ensure that delivery agencies have senior board champions for digital and that there is a digital champion sitting on the Department for Transport (DfT) board.

Progress during 2013

Updates against digital strategy are now a regular feature of DfT board meetings and there is a commitment from senior leaders to ensure that the department uses digital tools and techniques to engage more effectively with its stakeholders. Each transactional agency has a board member responsible for digital service delivery.

Planned activities in 2014

The merger of Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) and the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) into a single delivery agency will continue with the appointment of a single board, whose structure will include a digital champion to oversee delivery of the strategy. The new chief executive of Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) will implement a new board structure following the review being carried out in November 2013. A Digital Leaders Group will be set up across DfT to ensure that all areas have a clear point of accountability and focus on implementing the digital strategy.

Progress during 2014

DfT has a digital leaders group that is chaired by the DfT digital leader and includes digital and technology leads from the department’s agencies. DVLA and Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) have similar posts on their main boards. This ensures that all areas have a clear point of accountability and focus on implementing the department’s digital strategy. The group meets bi-monthly and ensures that central messages, best practice and experience are shared throughout the department.

Planned activities in 2015

The department will continue its programme to raise digital awareness; its strategy committee will consider the impacts of digital and technology development on the department’s objectives.

Action 2: Services handling over 100,000 transactions each year will be re-designed, operated and improved by a suitably skilled, experienced and empowered service manager

Service managers will be in place for new and redesigned transactions from April 2013.

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT’s digital product managers and transaction owners will ensure that they either have the required skills themselves, or have ready access to specialist skills to help them design and improve its digital services.

Progress during 2013

DVLA has appointed a service manager to direct the design of the 3 DfT digital exemplars, who has undergone the service manager training.

Planned activities in 2014

Training will be cascaded in DVLA and service manager training will continue in the merger of VOSA and DSA. Training plans will be developed for the agencies and groups delivering lower volume services.

Progress during 2014

The 3 DVLA exemplar transactions and DVSA’s Practical driving test booking service all have service managers in place. Service managers for other high volume areas, such as the new MoT service, have been recruited. Recruitment and in-house training is underway for other lower volume transactions.

Planned Activities in 2015

DVLA will share its comprehensive approach to the recruitment and training of service managers with other agencies.

Action 3: All departments will ensure that they have appropriate digital capability in-house, including specialist skills

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT people will undertake the necessary training to improve their digital skills and has expert help in place to support them in the use of digital. DfT will work with Government Digital Service (GDS) to:

• determine what digital skills are required
• identify individuals who have high-end digital skills that could be deployed across the department
• put digital skills training in place
• ensure that all staff use the core competency framework to set appropriate objectives related to digital skills

Progress during 2013

DfT conducted a skills audit in the spring across the range of skills and competencies covered in the Civil Service Reform Plan. Training and development in some specialised areas, including service management, agile development and digital communications has been undertaken. A workshop to cover more general digital skills such as web listening has been piloted and research into how best to conduct a more specific digital capability audit has been carried out. Important roles have been filled, including service manager for the 3 exemplars, product owner, testers, developers and business analysts. Support is being provided by a GDS agile coach.

Planned activities in 2014

The DfT board has agreed a campaign to educate staff in the central department about digital working in the spring. This will be followed by a detailed capability assessment to ascertain skills and gaps across the entire department.

Progress during 2014

DVLA and DVSA restructured the way they bought and commissioned digital services in line with the service standard. DVLA began working with local education establishments, including Swansea’s 2 universities, as well as local businesses and the community through sponsoring Swansea’s TechHub initiative to develop a future supply of skilled local talent. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency further insourced its capability as part of its Future Coastguard Programme.

Planned Activities in 2015

Developing digital skills remains a priority for the department and its agencies. The department will pursue its policy of aligning operating models with its digital capability so that work is delivered from the section of the department with the right equipment and skills. For example the service management of the Heavy Goods Vehicle levy is run by DVLA.

DfT will use the results of the Annual Skills Review to inform its approach to basic digital skills training with the aim of enabling more staff to reach level 7 on the digital inclusion scale

Action 4: Cabinet Office will support improved digital capability across departments

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

It will determine what digital skills are required by DfT, working with GDS, identifying individuals with high-end digital skills who could be deployed across the department and putting digital skills training in place where required.

Progress during 2013

DfT has supported the work by Cabinet Office to raise digital capability across departments.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT will continue to support the work by Cabinet Office to raise digital capability across departments.

Progress during 2014

The department continued working closely with GDS and put multidisciplinary teams in the areas of greatest priority. Joint teams of DfT and GDS staff working with contractors is common practice. Where DVLA and DVSA used contractors they ensured that adequate knowledge was transferred to in-house teams.

Planned Activities in 2015

DfT will continue to support the Cabinet Office in its approach.

Action 5: For transactional departments, 3 exemplar services will be selected

Redesign starting April 2013, implemented by March 2015 (to be included in relevant business plans). Following this, departments will redesign all services handling over 100,000 transactions each year.

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

It will re-design 3 exemplar transactions by 2015: DVLA vehicles online, DVLA personalised registrations, and DVLA integrated enquiries platform. Any service in excess of 100,000 transactions a year will be fundamentally redesigned to become digital within 5 years wherever it is cost effective and affordable to do so. DFT plans to achieve 80% take-up as soon as possible afterwards.

Progress during 2013

DfT’s first exemplar transaction, the DVLA online integrated enquiry platform, entered beta stage and remains on target for its delivery date. The 2 other exemplars started discovery phase. VOSA has developed plans to redesign the MOT transaction and DSA has made improvements to the online booking of the practical driving test.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT’s 3 exemplars will be made live. Design of other high volume transactions will be planned and prioritised as part of the strategic reviews being undertaken, with plans to be agreed and published by April 2014.

Progress during 2014

View driving licence, a DVLA service, went live in October.

Planned Activities in 2015

DVLA’s Vehicle management and Personalised registrations will go live. These are part of DVLA’s integrated enquiry platform (IEP), a digital platform for driver and vehicle enquiry services.

DVLA will extend its approach to other high volume transactions such as improvements to car tax renewal as well as a view vehicle record service for transport fleets. Share my driving licence will give authorised third parties access to driver data.

Action 6: From April 2014, all new or redesigned transactional services will meet the Digital by Default Service Standard

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

All new digital services will meet the service standards and be accessed through the GOV.UK platform. It will also develop plans to increase use to at least 80% wherever possible.

Progress during 2013

The exemplar services are being designed in line with the Default By Default Service Standard. Experience from these will be taken into the redesign of the other high-volume DfT transactions.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT will ensure that all new or redesigned services will meet the Digital by Default Service Standard from April 2014.

Progress during 2014

DVLA View driving licence went live in July. DVSA’s Practical driving test booking service also went live.

Planned Activities in 2015

DVLA’s Vehicle management and Personalised registration services will go live in the new year, having passed all service standard criteria.

DfT will continue to work with its agencies to ensure the service standard is embedded into all services and will look at implementing the standard for the department’s internal transactions.

DfT’s MoT Service is expected to go live by autumn. This covers 22,000 garages.

Action 7: Corporate publishing activities of all 24 central government departments will move onto GOV.UK by March 2013, with agency and arm’s length bodies’ online publishing to follow by July 2014

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT will move all departmental, agency and arm’s length body (ALB) corporate content to the GOV.UK publishing platform by March 2014. It will review all corporate standalone sites and tools and move them to the GOV.UK platform or move them to a cost-effective central hosting platform (as appropriate) by March 2015.

Progress during 2013

DfT and its 3 largest agencies (DSA, DVLA, and VOSA) have migrated their publishing activities onto GOV.UK.

Planned activities in 2014

The remaining DfT agencies and ALBs will have their websites migrated to GOV.UK. Corporate standalone sites will be reviewed and plans developed for their transition to GOV.UK.

Progress during 2014

All agency and ALBs have moved to GOV.UK.

Planned Activities in 2015

Corporate standalone sites will continue to be reviewed and plans developed for their transition to GOV.UK.

Action 8: Departments will raise awareness of their digital services so that more people know about them and use them

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT will promote and encourage the use of digital channels, for example through mail outs and leaflets, social media, newsletters, exhibitions, media and press, contact centre call waiting messages and other forms of publicity.

Progress during 2013

DfT continued to promote the use of digital channels through Twitter campaigns, targeting specific demographic groups via YouTube channels and more traditional direct marketing approaches.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT’s activities on raising take up will focus on improving the services and providing assisted digital services rather than increasing awareness. However, campaigns will continue to ensure public awareness is improved.

Progress during 2014

All 3 exemplars have channel shift strategies to encourage greater use of digital channels. Some other services such as Practical driving test booking are achieving digital take up above 90%

DVLA will work with intermediaries for Vehicle management and Personal registration to encourage use of digital services at point of vehicle sale and purchase.

DfT continued to raise awareness through the use of blogs and social media. New social media and consultation channels were developed in partnership between digital communication and policy leads to increase stakeholder engagement.

The department was actively involved in the promotion of GOV.UK as a brand by participating in a Thunderclap campaign (#startatGOVUK). It encouraged the public to access government services via GOV.UK to avoid third party providers that can be costly to users.

Planned Activities in 2015

DfT will continue to take part in the promotion of GOV.UK by running campaigns which improve public awareness. DfT will continue to encourage staff to learn and use social media tools to engage with stakeholders.

Action 9: We will take a cross-government approach to assisted digital

This means that people who have rarely or never been online will be able to access services offline, and we will provide additional ways for them to use the digital services.

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

It will ensure new and existing DfT digital services, and new policies include provision for assisted digital, assessing the impact of digital improvements on equality. It will work with GDS and other departments and organisations to develop a cross-government procurement for assisted digital services.

Progress during 2013

DfT has supported the cross-government approach to assisted digital through active involvement in the working group and hosted a market engagement event to engage potential providers of assisted digital services to the public.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT’s exemplar services will be designed with assisted digital delivery as a core part of the design, rather than as an afterthought. DfT will continue to participate in work on assisted digital and digital inclusion.

Progress during 2014

The department continues to work with the Cabinet Office on the further development of its assisted digital approach.

Planned Activities in 2015

As part of the rationalisation across the department’s agencies, DfT will look to share their approach to assisted digital, in particular the role and scope of the department’s call centres.

Action 10: Cabinet Office will offer leaner and more lightweight tendering processes, as close to the best practice in industry as our regulatory requirements allow

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

Working with Cabinet Office, DfT are moving to a multi-source procurement model to open the market to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), drive market competition and to make it easier to replace under-performing suppliers. It is piloting a shift to a flexible (agile) and iterative approach to development to progressively move from legacy IT systems to a new ‘greenfield’ IT platform.

Progress during 2013

DfT has adapted its procurement processes to ensure that G-Cloud is the preferred procurement route for all IT spend. Work continued on the major IT modernisation projects to transform not only the IT platforms but also the way solutions are commissioned, designed, developed and run. DfT avoided creating multi-million pound projects and increased opportunities to a wider supply base including SMEs.

Planned activities in 2014

New contracts for IT services will be let using the new approach and DfT will start to exit from some of the longstanding IT outsourcing contracts.

Progress during 2014

All 3 exemplar services tenders were awarded through G-Cloud and Digital Services framework.

Planned Activities in 2015

The department will continue to support this approach and look to use more SME and shorter contract business models.

Action 11: Cabinet Office will lead in the definition and delivery of a new suite of common technology platforms which will underpin the new generation of digital by default services

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT will refresh its technical platforms to allow it to achieve its digital aspirations. The department will build in interoperability to its digital systems so that information can be easily migrated from one technology to another when it changes. It will use open, commonly used standards wherever possible to improve compatibility between systems and services. The department will also develop application programming interfaces (APIs) so it can meet the needs of all its customers, big and small.

Progress during 2013

DfT has developed plans to migrate its key transactional technology platforms towards a more open architecture. The first exemplar service was used to act as a pathfinder for future projects to migrate data to a cloud-hosted, open source platform and to develop APIs that can be used for other services and systems to interact with drivers data.

Planned activities in 2014

Work will commence on a project to move the VOSA MOT system onto to an open architecture that will allow MOT garages to connect via a standard web interface. DVLA will start the development of services to manage vehicles records for drivers records.

Progress during 2014

DfT continued to use common platforms in new and improving services. View driving record used open source technology and is hosted in the cloud.

Planned Activities in 2015

DVLA will work closely with GDS on the implementation of its GOV.UK Verify Service.

Action 12: Cabinet Office will continue to work with departments to remove legislative barriers which unnecessarily prevent the development of straightforward and convenient digital services

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT will develop plans to remove the barriers that make it difficult for people to do things digitally, working with GDS to identify any changes needed in legislation.

Progress during 2013

DfT has reviewed current and future service requirements and confirmed that there is only 1 remaining legislative barrier to delivering services digitally. A process is in place to deal with this, which is the need to return the vehicle log book to the DVLA when selling or disposing of a vehicle.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT will continue to work to remove the legislative barrier that requires the return of the vehicle log book to DVLA when selling or disposing of a vehicle.

Progress during 2014

DVLA removed a legislative barrier for vehicle management (the requirement to physically surrender the log book). The personalised registration process was reviewed and will also be simplified.

Planned Activities in 2015

DVLA will work with stakeholders to find the most effective way to remove the need for the driving licence paper counterpart.

Action 13: Departments will supply a consistent set of management information (as defined by the Cabinet Office) for their transactional services

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT will collect and analyse performance data on its services to help it identify opportunities for improvement and report progress on delivering digital services. It is working with GDS to automate this process using the quarterly data summary from April 2013.

Progress during 2013

DfT has worked with GDS to ensure reporting on the performance of digital services can be made available freely, instantly and accurately. An interface for the first exemplar service has been developed.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT will ensure that management information for the exemplar services and all other high-volume digital services are available by October 2014.

Progress during 2014

DVLA has provided user stories to be published on the relevant GOV.UK pages. The DVLA portfolio management team also created a dashboard that gathered information from all its current projects and programmes and included a forward view.

Planned Activities in 2015

DfT will ensure management information for the exemplar services and all other high volume digital services is available and continually monitored.

Action 14: Policy teams will use digital tools and techniques to engage with and consult the public

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DfT will open up the use of social media and collaboration tools for its staff, supporting and encouraging them to use these effectively. This will increase the ways they can listen to people’s views and concerns and enable them to engage, communicate and respond more effectively with a wider group of customers and stakeholders.

Progress during 2013

DfT has implemented a social media policy allowing all staff access to social media tools and channels. A communications campaign has highlighted use of these to encourage further use and learning.

Planned activities in 2014

DfT will encourage the further use and learning of social media tools.

Progress during 2014

All new services were robustly tested with users on a range of browsers and devices to ensure user needs were met.

Planned Activities in 2015

The department’s policy lead will continue to develop the department’s policy profession. The DVLA’s new user testing lab will provide facilities for use by all departmental services.

Action 15: collaborate with partners across public, private and voluntary sectors to help people go online

Action 15 was added to the Digital Strategy in December 2013, so reporting on departments’ actions will begin with 2014.

Progress during 2014

DfT and its agencies sought to ensure that all their transactions were as easy to use as possible by the widest possible audience, in line with the government’s Digital Inclusion Strategy. It identified the level of skills required to complete its transactions in line with the digital inclusion scale. For example the DVLA’s View driving licence service, which went live in October, was rated as requiring level 7 (basic) digital skills to complete.

DVLA organised local community activity through regular events to promote the benefits of going online to local organisations.

Planned Activities in 2015

DfT will continue to work with its agencies to embed digital inclusion into working practices. It will ensure that the department and its agencies build digital inclusion into broader policymaking.

Action 16: help third party organisations create new services and better information access for their own users by opening up government data and transactions

Action 16 was added to the Digital Strategy in December 2013, so reporting on departments’ actions will begin with 2014.

Progress during 2014

DVLA’s View driving record opened up access to drivers’ own data, including to industry stakeholders.

Planned Activities 2015

Share my driving licence service will be accessible by third parties to provide access to driver data.