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Designing a vision for the road ahead

Challenge

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) had rolled out new digital services and replaced paper artefacts, whilst passing on cost savings to customers. The DVLA continued to drive efficiency and explore new ways to put digital technology at the heart of service delivery after it had exited its long-standing outsourced IT contract.

The DVLA needed to maintain business as usual whilst it became a truly digital organisation; supplying critical services, underpinned by UK and EU law.

 

Rapid progress in modernising its service delivery is expected by users, government, and the DVLA’s leadership. It needed to set out a realistic vision, which could be practically and immediately put into action (thus avoiding the need to continue to patch the legacy architecture).

The vision must convince other parts of government that DVLA is the logical choice as a modern and efficient multi-channel service provider. 

Solution

Methods were brought on board to run Wardley mapping training sessions in order to begin to map the DVLA services, from which a technical architecture review was commissioned. 

DVLA architects mapped nine services, facilitated by Methods, which helped support the DVLA IT strategy, and inform the technical architecture review.

 A technical architect was employed specifically to review the DVLA IT strategy and offer expertise on migration options. The architect used a number of sources to make his observations:

  • Interviews with DVLA Architects, Deloitte, and security experts
  • Examining available collateral (Wardley maps, other documentation provided by DVLA)
  • Prior knowledge and understanding of the Government's Technology and Digital Strategy gained from working in Government Digital Service (GDS).

Impact

1. Skilled resource able to map the business using Wardley’s technique, leading to a better situational awareness for DVLA.

2. Identification of shared technical capabilities, leading longer-term to cost reduction as redundant capabilities are phased out.

3. Challenge to elements of the digital strategy, proving a useful alternative view .

4. Useful pointers and suggestions for technical improvements to be made.