Renew your driving licence beta assessment
Service Standard report Renew your driving licence 05/12/2023
Service Standard assessment report
Renew your Driving Licence
| From: | Assurance team |
| Assessment date: | 05/12/2023 |
| Stage: | Beta |
| Result: | Amber |
| Service provider: | Department |
Previous assessment reports
Service description
This service aims to solve the problem of…
- Enabling users to meet a legal requirement and renew their photocard driving licence with a new photo.
- Amending their address and meet other service criteria and integrate with a Customer Account if they choose to do so.
- The service will improve customer service by enabling the use of a strategic internal system to manage the application internally.
- Tracking and task requirements through the creation of a strategic application management service.
Service users
This service is for…
- Users who have a photocard driving licence
- Users aged between 25yrs 9mnths and 69yrs and 9mnths.
- Users whose photocard driving licence is due to or has expired.
- Users who want to transact online.
Things the service team has done well:
- the team has access to real-time data about the end-to-end service, covering automated and manual (back-office) parts of the journey.
- metrics are actively used to identify problems and help make the service better. There is good collaboration between analytics, product, and user research.
- the team has made effective use of existing architecture to support their service.
- the team has managed programme governance and agile governance well ensuring one does not hinder the other.
- the ‘Renew your driving licence with a new photo’ service is, from the user’s perspective, a fairly linear once-and-done service, which has been designed in a way that makes it pretty easy for users to complete their task - as evidenced by data from the private beta.
- the service has been designed to remove dependencies on the legacy D90 system where possible.
- DVLA are continuing to develop an open sourcing strategy and have provided content guidelines for engineers to post code and articles in the open.
- the team has improved their image processing utility and made this available for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
- the team has undertaken user research using various methods and have re-used findings from previous research carried out for other services. The team have commissioned an accessibility audit of the external-facing aspects of the service and plan to remediate the identified issues as soon as possible.
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
2. Solve a whole problem for users
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 2 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- the team did not supply or present a map of the whole service or a user journey map. We recommend creating these artefacts if they do not already exist.
3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 3 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- the team didn’t present evidence of researching unhappy paths and did mention that at least one support channel (web chat), although available to their users, was completely out of their scope. If these are gaps, we recommend that further research focussing on unhappy paths and available support options is undertaken.
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 4 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- the team does not include a dedicated content designer. Instead, content is written by other members of the team, including the product manager and interaction designer, and then passed to a central team of DVLA content designers for review. While this has not resulted in any major design problems, the content could be improved in various places.
- the content designer should be involved in the creation of content for both the external and the internal aspects of the service.
- tue to the development of the service from reused components, there has been relatively little end to end testing with users undertaken. We recommend that further end to end testing is undertaken with a broad range of users to validate the emerging findings that users can succeed first time with the minimum of help.
- the internal application’s user interface (UI) looks different to the customer-facing UI. This may not be a problem for its users - DVLA staff - but the team should be intentional about it: deviations from the GOV.UK design system should be logged and explained; new patterns and components developed specifically for this service should be considered for submission to the design system.
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 5 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- due to difficulties recruiting participants with low digital confidence, the number spoken to so far has been very low. The team has plans to carry out face to face research, perhaps through support groups offered by libraries, and we recommend that this plan is actioned promptly to close this research gap. Additionally, we recommend creating an assisted digital plan if there isn’t already a plan in place.
- the team should consider commissioning an accessibility audit of the internal user interface to ensure that internal users can also benefit from any accessibility issues being identified and resolved.
- there is a plan to improve the legacy service to meet accessibility standards. It is recommended that a funded and resourced plan for this work is developed, if not already in place.
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 6 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- it is recommended that the team have a dedicated content designer in place, one who is involved in design discussions, observes user research, has access to service data and contributes to design thinking - not just the words. This may not require a full-time person: someone who can be available two or three days a week may be sufficient.
- the team has a challenge with retention, efforts need to be made to better understand the reasons for this and measures need to be put in place to ensure sufficient resource with the correct skill levels are available.
7. Use agile ways of working
Decision
The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 8 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- as the service is created around several reusable components across the wider Evolve programme it was unclear how frequently product iterations took place. It is recommended that iterations are documented so performance / impact can be monitored.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Decision
The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 10 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- the team are working with CDDO to develop their cost per transaction metric. This should be done before the service moves to Public Beta so that the cost of the service can be understood, managed and reported on.
- recommend that KPIs are defined before the service moves to Public Beta so that service performance can be understood, reported on and actively managed from the outset.
11. Choose the right tools and technology
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 11 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- the team needs to provide more technical detail about how the Ten-Year Renewal (TYR) service interacts with other components in the Evolve transformation programme such as the Customer Account Management service.
- a roadmap should be provided about how dependencies on the D90 legacy system will be resolved.
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 12 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- it is commendable that the team has published their utility code and guidance in the open at https://github.com/dvla/ but the team should have a clear plan in place to look at how they can publish their service code without compromising security rather than stating it is too sensitive to ever publish. There are tools and strategies for removing secrets from source code in build pipelines and the team should look to adopting these practices.
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components, and patterns
Decision
The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.
14. Operate a reliable service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.
Next Steps
This service can now move into a public beta phase, subject to addressing the recommendations given for the amber points within three months time and CDDO spend approval.
This service now has permission to launch on a GOV.UK service domain with a Beta banner. These instructions explain how to set up your *.service.gov.uk domain.
The service must pass a live assessment before:
- turning off the legacy service
- reducing the team’s resource to a ‘business as usual’ team, or
removing the ‘beta’ banner from the service