DVLA doubles annual IT spend

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is to more than double what it spends annually on its IT deal with IBM. It has signed a three-year extension to its existing Partners Achieving Change Together (Pact) ten-year deal, which covers technical infrastructure, operation and support, as well as transformation and system …

[John Smith 19]

"system running costs"

" which have increased with the increased use of electronic transactions"

You bought some more serves and a load of disks?

And doubled the budget.

How many years ANPR traffic are they going to store here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes me mad...

Doubles?

Have the number of cars increased hugely? No. Has their business process got a lot more complicated? No.

Seriously... government IT spending is just la-la money. If I was spending £100 million to look after the DVLA's data, I'd expect to be shown around an office employing ace hot supermodel programmers with MENSA membership and servers made of solid gold.

[Simon.W]

What kind of contract

has its terms and costs defined by the provider only to have the costs overturned further down the line? A government contract.

IBM should have had the foresight, as it is supposedly in the IT business, to define the costs better - it shouldn't be the recipient that pays for the supplier's error. Unless of course it's this government.

[Anonymous Coward]

increasing transactions and cost - what they could have done instead

To get a tax disc on line, you have to access the motor insurers database.

They could have cut out all of this by just getting online insurance companies to sign for a stack of tax discs.

Now of course, as demand grows, they have spend more (of course...)

[Richard Porter]

All this money and

they still can't print a tax disc with the right make or marque on it. My V5C is OK, so is my tax disc reminder and MoT certificate. Why can't they print exactly the same make on the tax disc? I give up.

[clint11]

DVLA

My Road Tax does not expire until the end of the month, I had the renewal form a couple of weeks ago. Yet last Friday I get a postcard from DVLA reminding me to renew now or SORN the car. How much is it costing the DVLA for these unneeded postcards and postage?

[dreamingspire]

DVLA has a life of its own

Having put the DVLC past well behind it (3 wheeled Morris Minors, because of data entry methods not up to then extant best practice), DVLA now has an independent life of its own. For example, it makes the highly secure eBorders smart cards (e.g. laser embedded pictures capability). Expect to see it using its expertise to grow as a significant supplier to other govt organisations.

(Richard P: if they can't get it right, did you write to them, and did they reply? If they can't resolve this, email the Minister with copy to your MP.)