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April 24, 2024

UK Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency accelerates innovation with Microsoft Dynamics 365

The UK Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is a UK government agency responsible for setting, testing and enforcing the standards for drivers, vehicles and roads in Great Britain. In 2020, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365, they began work to bring their Theory Test services inhouse after 19 years. This hugely ambitious project was driven by a desire to realise cost savings and enable a faster pace of innovation and transformation.

Department for Transport

For 19 years, the UK Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency successfully outsourced the delivery of the Driver Theory Test service to a single supplier. However, by 2019, the leadership team at the DVSA wanted to bring management of the service inhouse to achieve greater control over a number of factors.

“Total cost of ownership was a key aspect,” admits Alex Fiddes, Head of Digital Operations at the DVSA. “But, more importantly, we wanted greater control over the change and transformation we could achieve.”

The drivers for change

The DVSA must respond to changes in policy and legislation. Further, the anticipated changes to vehicles, technology and the driving environment, such as the adoption of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, will require the agency to respond to change at an unprecedented pace.

At the same time, with the service fully outsourced, the DVSA lacked the ability to fully understand and tailor the customer journey. It was largely the same vanilla approach that had been specified 19 years earlier. Changes could take six to nine months to implement. Non-standard customer journeys weren’t easily accommodated digitally. To initiate a non-standard customer journey, a citizen had to call the DVSA – not always an ideal starting point for citizens with accessibility needs.

Driving towards a more inclusive service

For many young citizens, applying to sit their driving theory test is an important life event and, often, their first solo interaction with central government. The customer experience here can set the tone for all future interactions with UK central government. The DVSA team feel a strong responsibility to ensure the interaction is a positive one. 

A key focus for the team’s innovation efforts is to widen the provision of digital services to ensure the service is accessible to everyone. The DVSA accommodates more than 20,000 non-standard customer journeys each year. They support a range of needs, including dyslexia, deaf candidates and oral language modifying.

“It’s easy to say ’97 percent of people are catered for and that’s good enough’. However, we, as a team, decided that isn’t good enough,” explains Alex Fiddes. “We have a responsibility to give everyone a great service.”

Choosing Microsoft as a platform to bring the service inhouse

In 2020, the DVSA began work to scope out a platform which would enable it to bring the Theory Test service inhouse. With millions of tests conducted each year and thousands of test centres, this would be a project of unprecedented and ambitious scope.

The DVSA chose to build on Microsoft Azure, with Dynamics 365 Customer Service as the main bookings and customer service application. For the front end, Azure App Services would power the main customer and provider portals. Using either Microsoft Power Pages or Azure App Services, they could easily be configured to cohere with Government Digital Service (GDS) standards.

The DVSA knew it could fully meet its data privacy, data sovereignty and “defence in depth” approach to cybersecurity using the Microsoft technology stack. Tight integration with security tools such as Microsoft Entra ID, Azure Monitor and Microsoft Sentinel is a big advantage of the DVSA’s choice of Dynamics 365.

Alex Fiddes explains the decision: “When you think about our customer journey, we have bookings, finance systems, payments systems, the practical test system and sharing data with the DVLA – it’s ten integrations across the service. The Microsoft technology stack – with Microsoft Azure and Dynamics 365 – gives us much better control and integration over all that orchestration.”

The choice of best-in-class software supported by an integrated end-to-end technology stack is a huge advantage in terms of ease of overall management and total cost of ownership. Alex Fiddes adds, “The minute you step out into other proprietary software, you have to manage those vendors, those integrations, the different performances. Microsoft offers a much more integrated approach.”

A rollout programme with an agile approach

Because the DVSA had decided not to renew the contract with its incumbent supplier, the project to bring the service inhouse had a rigid delivery date. If the new inhouse service wasn’t live by September 2020, the DVSA risked high financial penalties to extend the previous service provision.

The DVSA team leant into the strength of the Microsoft Partner Network to bring in the necessary skills and expertise and build a multi-talented team that could successfully deliver the new platform. As Alex Fiddes points out, “The richer the partner pool, the richer the outcome – and Microsoft has a rich partner network.”

The approach to the rollout was structured around an agile methodology and a “greenfield” build. Ahead of the September 2020 deadline, the DVSA rolled out the system to an inhouse Royal Navy test centre in January 2020. Alex Fiddes explains, “We rolled out very, very slowly and learnt from there. We avoided a ‘big bang’.”

Tim Haines, Delivery Manager at the DVSA, agrees, “Those inhouse test centres were incredibly valuable to us. They served almost as a beta community that allowed us to test the model and derisk a quite complex, disaggregated supplier landscape.”

This learn and adapt approach has been followed throughout the entire project lifecycle. “When we opened it up to the public, rather than transfer one service and all its bookings to the new service, we ran the two services in parallel for a few months,” Alex Fiddes confirms. “We knew the buyer journey meant most people book their test within one to two months of registering, so we could move over within this timeframe. By doing this, we avoided the need for a massive data exchange and the associated disruption to customers.”

A rollout schedule with a hard stop

Early on in the delivery, the pandemic forced the DVSA into lockdown. Tests were suspended temporarily, but the delivery of the new service platform had to continue.

“We suddenly had to shift to working remotely,” Tim Haines recalls. “We didn’t miss a beat. We dived from physical meeting rooms straight into living in Microsoft Teams. We were able to run 5,000 tests on day one. We pulled off this hugely ambitious project with an inflexible deadline and that’s a massive credit to both the people involved and the technology.”

Alex Fiddes agrees, “What we’ve done as a service has built a huge amount of confidence with people. It’s scaled up and its worked. We don’t even think about it. We just wake up in the morning and everything just works and scales. It’s about choosing and having the right product. Our feedback and the feedback in the public domain has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Emerging from the pandemic to increased demand

The scalability of Microsoft Azure and Dynamics 365 has proved to be of enormous benefit to DVSA. Before the pandemic, when the platform was first being planned, the DVSA theory testing service delivered 2.4 to 2.6 million tests per annum.

By the time the inhouse platform went live, and the nation came out of the pandemic, annual demand for theory tests had increased to 3.6 million.

“The metrics when the inhouse service went live were completely different the metrics which we planned for. To this day, we are still surprised at the volumes that are going through,” reports Alex Fiddes. “Everybody talks about the scalability of cloud – and we were hyperscaling. It’s probably one of the biggest Microsoft Dynamics instances in the UK. Our choice of Microsoft meant we were able to accommodate that increased demand without any heavy engineering redesign.”

“This extensibility comes down to the technology choices we made,” agrees Rob Davies, Orchestration Service Owner at the DVSA.

With control comes insights

In line with another promise of cloud, the Microsoft platform is being leveraged by the DVSA to boost agility as well as scalability. Previously, the service was something of a “black box” to the DVSA.

Tim Haines explains, “The partner was operating the service; they were inside the box with the insights – to the extent that their technology platform offered them.”

“Now, we have Microsoft Dataverse and Power BI which give us insight into what’s happening across the service. We have Azure App Insights which gives us analytics into how candidates are booking journeys and where those journeys break down,” Tim Haines continues. “We know more about our customers and their needs – and we have a greater ability to act on that insight. Our technology choices have given us a platform that we can continue to adapt.”

The DVSA team is now free to pursue a continuous improvement approach. Rob Davies agrees, “Having control over the technology and the customer journey means we can do things we want much quicker and the benefit to the customer is greater.”

A faster pace of change

Two years on, the insights gathered since bringing the service inhouse are powering further improvements, both incremental and strategic. Alex Fiddes says, “Now, with what we understand about our daily demand, our forecast demand, our commissioning, we are going back to the online booking portal to improve the customer journey and move the service forward.”

“Changes used to take nine months to make. Today, we can make those changes within a matter of weeks,” says Alex Fiddes. “What’s more, we can instantly see how those changes impact our customer service centre, our email channels and the reduction of complaints. It’s almost like turning on a tap. We see the results almost instantly. It enables us to change and adapt.”

A digital-first service

The greater control over the evolution of the platform the DVSA now enjoys enables the team to keep up with changing expectations. Alex Fiddes observes, “Customer behaviour today is very different to the personas we established beforehand. Post-pandemic, people’s expectations of digital services are much higher. They expect the online retail experience – and I think we get pretty close to delivering that.”

Although the driver theory test is not mandatorily a digital service, it today enjoys a 98.6 percent digital take-up rate. This is, in part, testament to the incredible work the DVSA team has put into making the service more accessible for all.

A more inclusive service

Some of the biggest transformation has been in digitally enabling non-standard customer journeys. Alex Fiddes advises, “There’s always a cost-to-return analysis to this, of course, but since bringing the service inhouse we’ve invested heavily in making sure we are really, really inclusive.”

The three percent of customer journeys which were previously unsupported digitally, account for approximately 80 percent of the customer service effort. Enabling these customer journeys digitally, therefore, isn’t only good for the affected customers; it’s beneficial for the overall cost and ease of operating the service. It will contribute to the £15m+ worth of savings the DVSA expects to achieve over five years by bringing the service inhouse.

In the first year, there was a 129 percent increase in tests with accessibility adjustments. It’s a rewarding and exciting boost for this important interaction with government. Alex Fiddes states, “Previously, our partner said our customer satisfaction rates were around the 80 percent mark. Now, we know our customer satisfaction rates are at 96 percent.”

Increasing digital access for all who want it is another focus of continuous improvement. For example, the DVSA has ambitions to support British Sign Language throughout its digital services. It is currently working with Microsoft and its partners to explore this possibility.

Learnings from the remarkable experience

The DVSA is eager to share learnings with other UK government organisations about what it takes to deliver an ambitious technology project like this. Technology choices, people and culture all play a key role.

“Every project has tough times and tough decisions and getting the people and culture right gets rid of so many of the other problems,” says Tim Haines. “We had people from different organisations working collaboratively in a badgeless way – and that’s testament to Alex’s leadership and vision. His leadership coupled with the right technology choices has been the fundamental underpinning of our success.”

“Since the project got underway, we’ve developed an even stronger relationship with Microsoft,” Rob Davies adds. “I think it would have been even better if we’d established that direct relationship and had Microsoft wrap its arms around us from day one. It’s easy to underestimate the time and effort you need to deliver a project like this.” 

He adds, “Having a strict deadline was probably good for us. It focuses minds and determines what you deliver on the day.”

A springboard for further innovation

The theory test is now one of the UK Government’s top 75 digital services. That’s an amazing achievement for a service that is only just over two years old. Most importantly, bringing the service inhouse has enabled the innovation and transformation DVSA sought. The team is keen to build on this success and drive continuous improvement.

“Over the next year or so, our Future Insights focus will help us set new KPIs and success metrics,” enthuses Alex Stevens, Business Analyst at the DVSA. “That will power a data-driven approach to shaping our future roadmap and in what we invest.”

“The world of data has enormous untapped potential for our ability to understand drivers and vehicles and the use of roads,” states Tim Haines. “Building in the Microsoft cloud gives us the ability to share that data and build up a rich picture across the country.”

The DVSA is now exploring the potential of generative AI, such as Microsoft Copilot. Alex Fiddes explains, “Over the next decade, changes to the driver landscape will require us to evolve hazard perception and the theory test. It’s still early days, but I think our work will help the DVSA to respond at a far more rapid pace than it’s done in the previous three decades.”

“Our choice of Microsoft meant we were able to accommodate that increased demand without any heavy engineering redesign.”

Alex Fiddes, Head of Digital Operations, DVSA

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