DVLA Customer Account beta reassessment

Service Standard reassessment report DVLA Customer Account 20/04/2023

From:
Central Digital and Data Office
Published
23 November 2023
Assessment date:
20 April 2023
Result:
Met
Stage:
Beta reassessment

Service Standard assessment report

DVLA Customer Account

From: Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO)
Assessment date: 20/04/2023
Stage: Beta reassessment
Result: Met
Service provider: DVLA

Previous assessment reports

Service description

The vision for the DVLA Customer Account is to put customers at the heart of our business and services. Allowing us to seamlessly join up services as we align drivers and vehicles products. Customers will initially be able to view and manage their driver and vehicle information, later extending to all motoring related information as well as transact in one place. We aim to give customer access and control over their own data so they can make updates, removing the need for them to contact DVLA via any other mean like phone or paper. It will provide a consent-based model where customers can provide digital contact details and preferences. We will have the ability to tailor notifications to the preference of users, provide progress updates and reminders for key services such as Vehicle tax.

The development of the account is integral to the development of fully user centred services, at the core of our Evolve programme. The account will allow users to take advantage of the new identity platform by authenticating once, setting up a username and password, allowing secure and easy return to DVLA services, reducing the need for repeat log-ons and duplicate identity checks.

This service will allow us to onboard customers in future to the GDS Government Single sign on and Digital identity.  We intend to align to the opportunities offered by the Gov account to help create a motoring hub.

Service users

Initially the account will be for individual users of DVLA services (i.e., driving licence holders and vehicle keepers). It will later iterate to be suitable for business users and large companies allowing all DVLA customers to have an account.

High level user needs this service aims to meet

● as a customer I need simple and repeatable access to my motoring information and services

● as a customer I need to access all my motoring information and services in one place

● as a customer I need to be reminded to do tasks relating to my vehicle and driving licence so that I can remain compliant

1. Understand users and their needs

Decision

The service met point 1 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the team are clearly in a regular routine of doing user research that they are using to better understand users and their needs

  • the team are doing research with a good spread of participants with different characteristics

  • researchers are exploring different research methodologies to add to the team’s understanding of potential pain points on their journey

  • the team are using a good combination of complementing quantitative and qualitative research methods to yield research findings

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • continue to push the recruiter to provide users with access needs in your rounds of research and consider alternative or supplementary methods of recruiting if they are struggling to help you reach your 25% target. Prompting the recruiter to consider broader non-visible disabilities might help them

2. Solve a whole problem for users

Decision

The service met point 2 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the service team is regularly sharing and collaborating across different parts of DVLA including operational and contact centre staff and with other agencies such as DVSA on including vehicle tax information providing a joined-up experience

  • the team have a short-term roadmap on what is next for the service and vision on what could be included in the future

  • the service team understands the current constraints of the service, mostly due to technical limitations with current legacy systems, and they have a plan to iteratively add to and improve the service, for example by reducing down the number of places where a user has to change their address from several to one

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • work with the GOV.UK content team in GDS to review content and journeys to the account service, including iterating the start page, and other DVLA services where the account is part of a different task-based journey, for example viewing a driving licence rather than just a single journey to the account itself

  • have a long-term strategic roadmap for the service which can provide the service with the clear vision and aim

  • continue to research navigation across the boundary of the account into stand-alone services

  • consider how reminders are only one solution in solving the problem of keeping users compliant on their vehicle tax and encouraging uptake in direct debits for example could better meet user needs some cases

3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels

Decision

The service met point 3 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the service team is working with staff in DVLA, particularly contact centre staff, on making sure the service is fully supported and that staff have access to an internal tool to support users with their customer account, which was also designed and tested with staff

  • the account service will run alongside existing methods such as post or phone for users who want to use offline methods as well as continuing with standalone online services for users who do not want to create an account

  • insights are being used from the helpline to inform improvements or changes to the service

  • the service team are considering other ways users can contact DVLA for support with the account such as webchat alongside the phone helpline

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • continue to test and iterate unhappy/failure paths in the identity verification service to make sure users are clear about the next steps, such as ways to continue offline through the contact centre, and not reach dead ends in their transaction or task

4. Make the service simple to use

Decision

The service met point 4 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the service is using different components and patterns from the GOV.UK Design System, and existing DVLA patterns and components which have been tested

  • the service team has tested the notifications users get by text message and email

  • the service team has iterated content and notifications in the service following user research to make sure key messages are front loaded

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • request, complete and implement recommendations from the GDS content review

  • ensure users are provided an alternative to just postcode look-up in the identity verification service, and they can enter their address manually

  • review and potentially research ‘years and months’ questions in the identity verification service to see if simply entering a date is easier for users

  • review the service name to make sure it is clear to users what the service is and future proof if non-DVLA services are onboarded. The service manual has guidance on naming your service, recommending verb-based names and not including government department or agency names. This will also be part of finalising the service start page and service domain with GDS

5. Make sure everyone can use the service

Decision

The service met point 5 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the team have tested the service with a wide range of users, for example different geographic locations, users whose first language is not English and stress-case user groups such as disqualified drivers

  • the team has tested with users across the digital inclusion scale

  • the team has completed an accessibility review of the end to end journey, through the identity service into the customer account service and fixed any issues.

  • the service’s accessibility statement is ready to publish in public beta

  • the team’s privacy statement is ready for public beta explaining to users how their personal details will be used, and they have explored the guidance around passports and “identity documents” to make it clearer for users

  • whilst the team have not fully fixed the challenges around the ‘title’ question auto selecting a user’s sex (as a result of constraints in legacy technology), they have allowed an option for free text of title which will be reviewed. They are also considering long-term whether title is needed at all.

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • continue research with users on mobile devices to gain confidence in the user experience the service delivers to those users.

  • follow the plan with their counterpart agency in Northern Ireland and the journey from the devolved website.  As they will not be launching the service ready for Northern Ireland users, it will be important that the team ensures the text is clear for those users, that they have not made any errors, and manage their expectations of when they will be included.

6. Have a multidisciplinary team

Decision

The service met point 6 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the majority of the team have remained consistent since Alpha and that continuity continues into public Beta

  • the team is primarily permanent civil servants, some of whom work on other products within the wider service enabling knowledge sharing

  • the team acted on Alpha assessment recommendations to bring in a content designer along with a defined Service Owner

  • technical decisions are collaboratively reached between the team and wider architecture community

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • consider whether sufficient service design capacity is in the team to allow understanding of the various journey’s a user will go through as the account is in the iteration phase where services are contained inside and outside of the account.

7. Use agile ways of working

Decision

The service met point 7 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the team use many of the common agile ceremonies in order to allow collaboration, and make their work visible through show and tells

  • the team is using regular user research and adapting their approach as they learn

  • the team clearly has a robust governance structure and process in place including using business change managers and a steering group

  • the team regularly engage with the customer contact centre and gather user feedback from them, they have plans in place for operational readiness for the transition into public beta

8. Iterate and improve frequently

Decision

The service met point 8 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment..

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the team is taking an iterative approach to the whole programme of work and demonstrated that usability testing and private beta panel feedback are informing multiple iterations throughout private beta to the service

  • the team understand that there is value in soft launching a minimal viable service to users in public beta to learn early how a DVLA Account is received, even though it won’t have some key functionality on day one

  • CI/CD pipelines exist to promote code through the environments into production, enabling the team to respond to technical problems or security vulnerabilities

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • consider what the most painful journeys are for users who have to leave the account to complete a task, as you learn from real users in public beta. This will help in prioritising what functionality to add and iterate first. The team are doing a lot good work in how they’ll temporarily signpost people to services outside of the account, but don’t let this temporary fix work overtake time spent on giving the account the functionality that meets the primary user needs

  • ensure there is clarity over prioritisation decisions made for the next iterations of the account and ‘the why’ behind them, more visibility of this would be helpful for the panel and perhaps the team overall in refining what is challenging work to prioritise

  • consider how you might feedback and influence improvements on the identity service, which is owned by a different team, from what you learn

9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy

Decision

The service met point 9 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the service used an approach to authentication that balances the risks in a proportionate way

  • the team followed the standard cookie and privacy policies

  • the team has carried out appropriate vulnerability and penetration testing and has scheduled quarterly service health reviews

  • the team have integrated static analysis and vulnerability scanning tools into the code and image repositories

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • actively identify security and privacy threats to the service

  • iterate on the good work fixing issues identified in the penetration test and decide the schedule of future tests as new components or features are developed

10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data

Decision

The service met point 10 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment..

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that the team:

  • has identified service-specific success metrics drawn from the aims of the service and the needs of users; the panel would like the team to give greater consideration to these over the 4 standard KPIs

  • is collecting user feedback and data from the call centre, web chat, and the identity checking application – this is at a level granular enough to help the team understand problems people experience when using the service

  • is planning to demonstrate how the growth of the service contributes to savings for the business and a better experience for users (less printing and postage, fewer unnecessary contacts, and higher rates of compliance, for example)

  • has an approved cookie policy, letting users opt out of analytics cookies – the team is also planning to implement an in-house analytics solution that is not dependent on cookies

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • consider follow-up research with longer-term users to evaluate the effectiveness of features like reminders, change of address etc

  • apply detailed analytics tracking to the service to enable collection of data on user activity, validation errors etc. – the team explained that they have recently had to switch to using Google Analytics after problems with implementing their in-house analytics package, so detailed tracking is currently unavailable

  • give practical examples of how the data they collect has helped them to improve the service

11. Choose the right tools and technology

Decision

The service met point 11 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the team had chosen to use standard languages known to the DVLA, enabling shared libraries and policies to be reused within the service

  • the team have an effective approach to managing legacy ETL feeds the service integrates with, allowing the service to continue operating

12. Make new source code open

Decision

The service met point 12 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the service team will continue to make their source code open which will benefit other departments developing similar services: https://github.com/dvla.
  • DVLA will develop an open sourcing strategy which will be employed by the service team.

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns

Decision

The service met point 13 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • standard government technology components have been used where possible, (authenticator, GOV.UK Notify, GOV.UK Design System), and components of the application use existing libraries in the form of Ruby gems

  • cloud first policy had been adopted, the service being hosted on AWS

  • the integrate and adapt policy had been adopted, API’s having been implemented, allowing the service to adapt to future demands and the service integrates with existing ETL systems

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • share details of business continuity processes for new cloud infrastructure components, such as the AWS QLDB

14. Operate a reliable service

Decision

The service met point 14 of the Standard in the previous assessment and was not subject to consideration at reassessment.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the team had the ability to deploy code changes often and without significant downtime, with a tested process if a need to rollback was identified

  • appropriate logging and alerting is in place to enable the team offering 24/7 support in public beta to keep the service online

  • path to live environments exist to test the service at each stage in the development life cycle

Updates to this page

Published 23 November 2023
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