[KineticLensman]

> Want to renew my driving license? Well, that's yet to move from the old DVLA site, but it's all getting there

Some important UK government services are still lagging behind. DVLA, since you mention it, has a mix of okay and truly appalling services. I'm in the position of trying to renew my driving licence after it was revoked for medical reasons. It's now six months since my cardiac arrest and I now meet the medically-fit-to-drive criteria. But, I face an 84 day delay in my application being processed, as detailed on the DVLA's 'how-slow-are-we-today' page [0], which is actually labelled as a COVID-19 update. Furthermore, I have to post a paper application form to them as they haven't yet digitized the medical review service [1]. This is life-wrecking stuff for anyone who needs a driving licence for their work or similar.

I do like the gov.uk sites in general, but a lot of the back-office stuff is still disastrous. Some of this is due to strike action and COVID, but a big part of the problem is the continual failure of the various UK Govt departments to successfully manage large IT projects.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/dvla-coronavirus-covid-19-update

[1] https://www.gov.uk/reapply-driving-licence-medical-condition

[hughrr]

The (old) DVLA web site is merely a shallow front end for the 30 year old incompetent bureaucratic triangle of carnage that hides behind it.

To get a decent result on any IT project you have to fix the organisation behind it before you even think about replicating that organisation digitally.

[KineticLensman]

> To get a decent result on any IT project you have to fix the organisation behind it before you even think about replicating that organisation digitally.

Exactly. I've seen this myself back in the day when I supported the MOD's system development (simulators for training, as it happens). As a techie, I was asked to develop some interoperability middleware between disparate systems. As my career matured, my focus changed to trying to get the systems to use common interfaces protocols / standards. Then I thought - why can't they have common requirements since may of them are doing very similar things, and drive tech commonality top-down. So I started working with the respective acquisition teams to get them to adopt common conventions. Then I started to question why they had disparate acquisition teams in the first place. This turned out to be because there were multiple customer project teams. Why was that? Because the different tribes in the army (infantry, armour, etc) didn't speak to each other at that level.

I eventually realised I was seeing a sort of example of Conway's Law [0], and was finally able to develop a proper briefing for a senior decision maker who was concerned about the technical / contractual complexity at one of his training schools (which had multiple different types of simulator, each with out own through-life support programme). This I believe finally led to some coherence-focussed reorganisations of the MOD teams involved, which was perhaps the most impactful thing I achieved in a couple of decades working in this space.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

[jsmith99]

Does the DVLA driving license service still only work during office hours? I couldn't believe they had an online system for renewing licences but it couldn't be accessed at night. Allegedly it's based on an ancient system that can't be trusted to be left running unattended.

[KineticLensman]

Not actually tried this, as the online systems don't support the service that I need in the first place.

Part of the problem is that they have multiple back-office legacy systems. I remember reading recently about a modernization of the personalised number plate system. This was apparently completely separate from the licence management so could be modernised quite easily. How convenient that it just happens to be a good revenue generator for DVLA, so presumably it was easier for someone to justify the development costs.