DVO
Driving towards an e-government future. How the DVO is harnessing the Web to enhance customer experience and internal communication
The advent of multiple communications channels has given companies as many problems as benefits; not least, how do you ensure that contact, data and service via one medium are consistent across all others? Imagine, then, that you not only offer a wide range of service channels to your customers, but also oversee a number of divisions, all of which manage their own specialist part of group affairs. That’s when things get complicated.
The Driver Vehicle Operators Group (DVO) is one such organisation. Divided into five separate government agencies – the DVLA, DSA, VI, VCA and TAN – citizens have traditionally needed to deal with different people for multiple enquiries, which can prove to be time consuming and frustrating.
The DVO’s vision was simple: to allow a ‘customer’ to use the Internet or other electronic channel to carry out multiple tasks on a single visit. For example, a citizen could apply for a provisional driving licence, book a driving test and arrange to pay car tax through a single interface with the organisation. In short, making its services more citizen friendly.
When looking at how to define the requirements more precisely, David Marshalsay, head of corporate planning at the DVO, decided to look outside the organisation for support.
As he explains:
“We selected Parity for the project as it had a good mix of commercial and public sector expertise, and understood the challenges we faced very well. This was backed up by the consultants put forward for the project, whose skills and experience were highly relevant.”
The objective of the project was to determine the desirability and feasibility of developing a common customer interface (CCI) for its services and systems – essentially a single Web-based interface through which the citizen can access all services offered by the group as a whole. This would not only form a core component of the group’s strategy for meeting Government e-services targets, but also allow for far greater integration and interaction amongst customers and the group’s constituent agencies. It would also optimise the use of different channels to make services available to a range of customers.
The Parity team would work with key individuals across the DVO Group to assess the feasibility of the CCI and to develop an output specification for DVO's new IT partner.
This process began with a range of interviews, ranging from executives within individual agencies to the group managing director.
Trevor Martin, technical manager at Parity said,
After this initial round of interviews, Parity talked to the project team as a whole, and then looked at the technical infrastructure, needs and drivers.
“Equally, if this type of system is going to be implemented, then it’s very important that it doesn’t substantially increase workload and introduce complications for staff. We therefore highlighted areas where integration was most crucial, to ensure that resources weren’t duplicated and information could be captured and shared internally as efficiently as possible.”
Upon completion of the three month project, the DVO put recommendations into place and included the output specification as part of the requirement of a new IT partner.
A spokesperson at the DVO says,
