Staged roll-out anyone?
"Yesterday was the official launch of the DVLA site, as paper licences became obsolete as of midnight. After a major collapse"
A new site mixed with a global deadline?
Really?
Wow.
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) site crashed yesterday under the strain of users flocking to receive an online code to replace their paper driving licence counterparts. One user, Dave Compton, told us he was still experiencing problems this morning. He said: "I retrieved the sharing code required for my hire car …
You really couldn't make it. Been reading and listening (radio etc.) about how this new 'service' will work and once again, it appears to be for the benefit of the government pseudo-department (DVLA) rather than their customers. The process itself appears to have been designed by a half-wit. The idea that the code (for the rental company) only lasts for 72hours and then you have to logon and apply for another is so patently stupid, it defies belief. Even an idiot wouldn't have implemented this.
On top of the stupid process, we now know that DVLA can't even keep the website up!! They cite heavy load......well, there's a surprise. First day heavy load.....who would have thought. Is it really necessary for all managers at these places to be half-wits? All of this was entirely predictable and could easily have been catered for.
Do you want a non-expiring code that can be kept by (or leaked from) the car hire company or its employees, and be (mis)used to check up on your driver record at some undetermined later date?
I take your point - but being able to pre-generate codes with fixed & limited future validity dates would be better. You could create a stack for sequential hires, if needed, but they wouldn't persist longer than necessary.
"I take your point - but being able to pre-generate codes with fixed & limited future validity dates would be better. You could create a stack for sequential hires, if needed, but they wouldn't persist longer than necessary."
Because all over the globe you can get a good Internet connection for little to no cost.
The DVLA is, once again, being cretinous.
"Do you want a non-expiring code that can be kept by (or leaked from) the car hire company or its employees, and be (mis)used to check up on your driver record at some undetermined later date?"
Do, what I want is some sanity. What information does the hire car company want? Basically, endorsements. So, why do we even need codes? Many endorsements are a matter of public record anyway, as looking in any local paper will tell you.......court reports etc. Speeding fines etc. might be fixed penalty.
The only information the hire car company needs to obtain is your endorsements (not DOB or anything like that), so why not simply let them look this information up from driver numbers? OK, anybody else who obtains my driver number might be able to look up my couple of speeding offences or whatever, but so what? If they're really that interested, I'm sure the DVLA call centre would happily discuss my entire driving record with a little social engineering...........
Didn't they do this already? I don't hire very often, but (IME) if you didn't take in the paper part of your license they phoned up, found out, and charged you £15 or whatever for the `service'. At least this web version should cut out the phone call and (one would hope) the charge.
I had a quick look at mine last night, 0 points 3 expired, but did include the court (Manchester). Some might argue that they would not want anyone, perhaps their spouse, to know they were in a certain place where they got caught speeding!
"The only information the hire car company needs to obtain is your endorsements"
Why do they even need that? All they really need is proof that you have a valid driving licence.
Endorsements should only really come into it if you are taking their insurance cover and be separate issue from the hire itself.
Do you want a non-expiring code that can be kept by (or leaked from) the car hire company...
No, I'd go for the low-tech approach. What about a date-stamped bit of paper kept with the licence which shows the details, and if necessary the online system just keeps a note of the date for the most recent revision? Sounds familiar for some reason, though.
"All of this was entirely predictable and could easily have been catered for."
Hindsight is always 20:20
I just tried myself, and it seems to work fine; I suspect the heavy load on the first day was partly due to people logging on "just to give it a try", so a freak-load event rather than a peak-load.
The limited life code is entirely sensible, and I suspect that most hire-car companies will address this by not bothering to check the on-line license data; they'll most likely address the risk of disqualified drivers hiring cars through additional insurance (they make more money on insurance anyway).
@Anonymous Blowhard.
Hindsight is always 20:20. True. But, you hardly needed hindsight to see this one coming. Yes, the heavy load earlier on was probably just people trying it etc., but that was entirely predictable and therefore more resources should have been made available for this entirely predictable spike. It's called basic project management and common sense. Something that is entirely missing from anything connected to the government and many other IT shops.
The limited life code is entirely stupid. People need to be able to hire cars whenever and wherever they like. Assuming universal internet access is silly, as this simply isn't true. People do need to hire cars in the back of beyond as well as at their villa in Tuscany (probably the only place senior people at the DVLA ever hire cars). The information needed by the hire car company isn't onerous and isn't really that private either. As I said before, a lot of it is available in court records and newspapers and is therefore already public knowledge. So, the whole 'security' basis for this is somewhat misleading anyway.
Ok so here is another mess up with the DVLA's planned paperless scheme. It's an absolute joke all these paperless decisions.
I hope the DVLA know of the various problems they are causing, this isn't the first time they have messed up like this, when the tax disc was abolished the site was down for a few days so people couldn't buy their road tax, and now this.
Also I hope the DVLA also realise how easy it is for someone to evade paying road tax now with no tax disc, and it also means the person can easily speed, and steal from petrol stations because the removal of the road tax disc also means the removal of any visible proof to check that the car has the right registration plate on it, other than checking the VIN number.
With no road tax disc there is nothing to stop a family with two identical cars (same make, model, engine, year and colour) from taxing one, taking the log book down for that one and having a new set of plates made up for it and putting it on the other vehicle. When it goes past any ANPR camera the camera would show that the vehicle is taxed, insured, MOT'd, etc, any speeding points would be given to the other vehicle, petrol theft would also be given to the other vehicle, and without stopping the car and checking the VIN the police would have absolutely no proof that the car they see is a different car to the other one.
The other thing is there is also nothing to stop someone walking down a street and finding an identical car to theirs that is taxed and insured and going online and getting a fake set of plates made, many places online that make vehicle plates do not ask to see any log book or anything, and again they could then use that vehicle in any way such as speeding, stealing petrol, etc and the police would need to check the VIN of the vehicle to actually find out if it was driving with fake plates, otherwise the owner of the other vehicle would get all the charges.
However with the old tax disc there was at least some proof that the vehicle had been taxed and the police could check that the tax disc reg plate matches the reg plate on the front of the vehicle, ok I suppose there was ways to fraud that too, but it was a lot more harder.
"However with the old tax disc there was at least some proof that the vehicle had been taxed and the police could check that the tax disc reg plate matches the reg plate on the front of the vehicle, ok I suppose there was ways to fraud that too, but it was a lot more harder."
The police almost never bothered with looking at the tax disc, and hadn't for over a decade.
"The police almost never bothered with looking at the tax disc, and hadn't for over a decade."
On both my last two manually produced tax discs the writing had faded to illegibility long before they expired.
The sensible Continental system of a new annual number plate seems to have been beyond us, but then we are the only country silly enough to obsess over personalised number plates. (One sociologist described them as "middle class tattoos", obviously before the middle class started dumbing down and getting actual ones)
The sensible Continental system of a new annual number plate seems to have been beyond us,
Which continent would that be? Are you suggesting that other countries issue a new number plate each year? I doubt that many do that.
but then we are the only country silly enough to obsess over personalised number plates.
The US has had them for years, but they're banned in most (all?) EU states. The UK does allow people to sell registrations, so that JUL 1 E and SUS 1 E go for silly money, but those aren't personalized per-se. There are some amusing ones, the Hastings Hotels group in N. Ireland is (was?) run by Bill and Joy Hastings, and they could be seen rolling around Belfast in cars with BIL 1066 and JOI 1066 plates.
UK law still prohibits the use of a license plate that could make a car seem younger than it is (i.e. a 1980 plate on a 1960 car), which can limit the fun & games a bit.
Excuse me if I'm slightly confused, but if the same family has the two identical cars, then what's the use of going hog-wild with one of them and getting the other one indicted for it ? It's still them that ends up with the bill (or the Police at their door).
Your second example is better - except that speeding carries a lesser fine than sporting a license number you have no right to. When you get caught for that you're not getting fined, you're going to jail. Not worth it unless you're already a hardened criminal.
..and as for stealing petrol by driving away from a petrol station without paying.... some police forces say they're no longer going to take action about that as they haven't got the budget and it can be resolved via the civil courts!
Strange that they don't take the same stance for copyright problems.... I wonder why....
The Road Fund Licence (ie a tax to pay for the building and upkeep of Britain's Roads) was abolished in 1936!
You pay Vehicle Excise Duty which is a tax on the ownership of a car or other such vehicle which you pay whether it's used or not unless declared SORN.
Yet still people claim that they "pay to use the roads" with the implicit or explicit assumption that this gives them more rights than those who don't...
> The Road Fund Licence ... was abolished in 1936!
Well, no it wasn't, only the name (more specifically, the goverment's name for it) changed; everything else stayed exactly the same - the price, the little disc you got to stick the windscreen, the way you bought it, ...
So it wasn't actually changed in any meaningful way. Obviously. And that's why people keep calling it by the original name.
>> The Road Fund Licence ... was abolished in 1936!
> Well, no it wasn't,
The point is that, up until 1936 it was "hypothecated" (ie ring-fenced) so it could *only* be used for road building and maintenance.
After then, it simply went into the government's coffers along with all the other tax revenue and they could spend that money on anything they wanted.
So, yes, it was changed in a meaningful way because for the last 80 years nobody has "paid to use the roads", yet there's still a dangerous sense of entitlement from many drivers who believe that it gives them the right to behave like arseholes towards anyone who doesn't pay vehicle tax.
I was getting 405 Not Allowed and 500 Internal Server Errors and sometimes the data entry page would just reappear again. Eventually, after half an hour of trying, it finally told me it could not verify my details and gave me a phone number to call. When I did I was told that "not all data has been transferred to the system yet".
I do not know if that is true or simply a bullshit excuse.
The only positive is that I can now recall my driver licence and NI numbers from memory having typed those in so many times.
I must admit I was worried when it was recently revealed that they have tied the driver number to your NI number (and more worried that you needed to know your NI number to this to get this information).
I'm trying to remember whether that was always the case (I was involved in the DRP program for photo-card licenses 10 years ago), and I don't think it was there then, although there was a data joining effort to allow passport photos to be used for driving licenses.
It seems that now that the ID card system is has gone the way of the dodo, that HMG have decided to use your NI number as a super-key to tie all their disparate databases together, adding it to databases that had previously never needed it. This was my primary objection to the ID card system in the first place, so I am not happy!
"HMG have decided to use your NI number as a super-key"
Here we go again. The US has made a complete mess of things, so let's copy them but without the good bits.
The American Social Security Number is massively misused as an authenticator, which it was not designed for and is completely unsuitable for. So now HMG are using the NI number as an authenticator.
Lots and lots of people have access to your NI number!
Lots and lots of people have access to your NI number!
Indeed, whilst filling between contracts last year, I joined an employment agency that needed my driving license number (for a driving job) and my NI number and DOB to pay me. Their computer system now has all the relevant details to run the check without me every knowing! I'm sure as a small agency they are not high on IT security and pay lip service to confidentiality
It seems that now that the ID card system is has gone the way of the dodo, that HMG have decided to use your NI number as a super-key to tie all their disparate databases together, adding it to databases that had previously never needed it.
Err... That is not copying USA. USA does not index _EVERYTHING_ by your NI.
That is copying Bulgaria which indexes everything (even your parking tickets) by your NI and it is even present in your passport and ID and has been doing it since the early 70-es. You cannot buy or sell a house, you cannot even buy or sell a car there without a check vs the indexed database showing that you are all in the clear with regards to your obligations to the state (I was trying to buy a summer house in 2005 and the sale fell through because the cretin selling it had 500+ worth of unpaid parking and speeding tickets).
and his mates will be along shortly with some statistics to prove it. Plus those complaining really need to understand that they have to keep up with the times and that going electronic will save the country a lot of money.
In the next stage of the role out you'll be able to request the code via Facebook.
Frustratingly missing from all the reports on this is how other countries manage this. I don't know if other countries have the same penalties/endorsement system as we do for drivers, but for those which do, and only have a photo licence then how do their citizens hire cars? Anyone know?
> for those which do, and only have a photo licence then how do their citizens hire cars? Anyone know?
You use your driving licence (+ credit card, obviously). If you get caught driving when you shouldn't, say you ran out of points, then you're deep in the shit. In many cases your licence will be confiscated by the police / judge anyway so you wouldn't have one. In those cases, and if you insist on driving a hire car, I presume you would get a mate to do the hiring for you, same as you would in Britain. Needless to say, it sounds like a remarkably stupid idea, but there'll always be one.
I really do not understand why some governments try so hard to make things as complicated as imaginable.
You get to the airport, hand over your photo driving license as ID along with your CC and you're off to the races. I wish I could say I was stunned that the DVLA have done something so dumb as a three day expiring code. You can just imagine the 20 civil servants in the room coming up with that shite. And as for the tax disk thing? Everyone else puts a sticker either on the registration plates or stuck to the inside of the windscreen.
As a Brit living in the US I can answer that for you. They don't care! I rent cars every other week or so here in the US with my NY drivers license. All they care about is whether you have a license or not - as the most serious driving offenses will lead to you losing your license - which means the police or courts will physically take it from you.
Although most states do have a record of past offenses, they don't really have a points system where three speeding tickets (or whatever) lead to you losing your license. However, the licensing authority does track that and when the police scan your license after stopping you they will see your terrible record and charge you with a "repeated" offense or just take your license from you.
I, too, was stunned at the short sighted approach that DVLA have taken here because its completely unworkable in most places in the world. Remember airlines and car rental agencies are still using dot matrix printers, so the likelihood (and risk) of all terminals being connected to the internet to check driving records is vanishingly small. I'm also going to echo the concern with using NI # as a unique identifier - which has been shown to be a complete disaster in the USA, so of course has been copied by the fuckwits responsible for this in the UK.
as the most serious driving offenses will lead to you losing your license
The lack of this is the root cause of the bad driving problems we have in the UK. Once we have a driving licence, usually in our late teens, we get to keep it until we're 70 years old. You can be caught driving dangerously, or speeding, and still keep your licence. If you're unlucky enough to kill someone with your dangerous driving you might be asked to stop driving for a few months, but that's as bad as it gets.
Keep the points system, ditch the fines, take people's licences to drive away as soon as they get 12 points (no "ifs" no "buts"), and seriously penalise anyone caught driving without a licence. As seriously as penalising someone using a gun without a gun licence. Driving behaviour would improve overnight.
For bonus improvements, require all drivers to retake their driving test every five years. That way everyone gets the latest test, and drivers have a strong incentive to try to keep their driving habits up to test-passing standard.
https://www.gov.uk/highway-code-penalties/penalty-table
Disqualification can also have the court-imposed requirement of an extended driving test before regaining your licence.
In the US, depending on state having your licence taken is roughly equivalent to a UK disqualification. You can see your state of choice here:
http://www.dmv.org/suspended-license.php
Reinstatement is usually granted after all ongoing court proceedings and ordered actions are complete on filling in a form and paying the reinstatement fee.
If you see the way people drive in the US, you'll see that the only deterrent to some really appalling driving is the police cruiser behind them and even then they probably didn't notice it...
"as the most serious driving offenses will lead to you losing your license
The lack of this is the root cause of the bad driving problems we have in the UK. "
I really hate to tell you this, but... that won't work. Here in Deepest South Florida, we do, indeed, have to renew our driver's licenses every few years. This has not noticeably reduced the number of crazies roaming the roads. All bad jokes about Quebecois snowbirds aside (It's JUNE! They're back in Quebec! Ha-le-lu-ja! With luck we can seal the border before October!) the roads are full of twits. Last week Friday I had to go to Miami (I only go to Miami when I absolutely have to, not being a native Spanish speaker) and on I-95 south I encountered not one but two major accidents, each involving at least three vehicles. (One was a roll-over and one involved a tractor-trailer. The one with the tractor-trailer blocked all five southbound lanes and required a helicopter to get the injured to hospital.) I got off I-95 and took the Turnpike instead, and, yes, there was another accident there. People around here can't drive, and especially can't drive in the rain. I learned to drive in Trinidad and Jamaica, where they use the British methods of learning to drive, and took the test in Ft. Lauderdale a few years back when I moved to Deepest South Florida. I'll tell you this: no-one who thinks they have learned to drive based on the test in Florida could possibly get a license in either Jamaica or Trinidad. And the boyz in Florida have dumbed down the test since I took it... I used to wonder why American tourists would drive so badly. Now I know why. (The only explanation for why Quebecois drive so badly is that they've killed off the last driving instructors in the province and the Canadian government can't pay anyone enough to replace them...)
Fury Road ain't in Australia, it's I-95 south of Hallendale Beach Blvd. (Exit 18. The last exit before entering Dade County. Abandon all hope, and learn Spanish, when going south of Hallendale Beach Blvd.)
Sorry, but your idea won't work.
Planning is all very well, but sometimes you need ahellavalottaluck too. Several years back, I managed a migration so large that, beforehand, my boss told me ‘if you muck this up, you’ll be front-page news. If it all goes well, no one will know about it’. Big motivational speaker that man. I succeeded (so you didn’t hear about it), but skirted close to the shoals of fuck-up on a few occasions that weekend (unforeseen circumstances and whatnot). I therefore have some insight to what these guys are going through - and I have a good deal of sympathy for them. Even if I don’t understand why they needed to do it at all.
10 years ago, when deploying databases for DRP, I so totally screwed up the EMC Symetrix mirroring that took down both the primary and backup EVL (Electronic Vehicle Licensing) servers at the DVLA for about 4 hours!
Bloody Symetrix mirroring was anything but symmetrical on AIX, and there was a undiscovered bug in the switching scripts, but these things can happen when you don't have totally representative test environments.
This was at 01:00 in the morning, so there were not too many people affected, fortunately!
Anon, for obvious reasons.
They have been migrating data over the last few weeks at least - we tried it last month and some records were there, some not.
Has anyone mentioned cost yet?
As an individual it is free to check your own data, but if you want to check someone else's record (e.g. a company checks their van drivers etc) they will be making a charge. I call that a tax on small businesses.
Needless to say most will be asking their drivers for the proof/code every year instead of a copy of the paper licence.
@Mad Mike
It would be wonderful if Big Bangs could be avoided entirely, but with the best will in the world (and even with careful planning) sometimes they are unavoidable. That doesn’t seem to be the case in this particular instance of course - but who knows? I don’t have all the information.
Planning often requires that you actually know the effect of some of the things that are being done. In my case, if I had had somewhere I could have executed exactly the commands I was going to use, I agree that this issue would not have happened.
Unfortunately, when the cost of the primary environment is such that the people holding the purse strings provide an unrepresentative environment to test in, there will always be risk of things not running as you expect them to. Again, in my case, the plan had been examined by two of my colleagues, one of whom who sat through the test run with me, and also the operational support team, and none of us spotted the potential problem that manifested during the work.
Also, with regard to breaking down the work to manageable chunks, if each of the chunks result in a service outage, you have to have a lot of clout to go against the service manager (often not technical) who is more likely to accept one moderate outage (and some risk) rather than three shorter outages, especially if they can deflect blame from themselves. From their point of view, it's less changes, less standing in front of the change board, and an easier life.
Again, in my case, the work was actually supposed to be minimal outage while the cluster was manually failed across to the backup server and back to make sure that both systems had the new filesystem definitions to allow automatic cluster failover. The version of HACMP being used was too early to allow the sync of the volume group definitions without actually activating the secondary copy. It was also complicated by the fact that EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility does not actually present the same LUN definitions to the backup server, limiting the use of C-SPOC. This was 10 years ago, and things will have changed.
Especially UK ones.
Because however bad I mess things up, I always have this kind of thing to reassure me that I'm not that bad.
First day launch on the day that people absolutely needed it ? Very bad idea, and this is why. New launches are never cut-and-dried affairs (ask Blizzard, and they know what they're doing), but timing the launch with mandatory registration is just asking for trouble - which they got in spades.
There is just one thing I wonder about : is there anybody in there that learns anything from these snafus ? Seems to me that UK gov is staffed with a load of Charlie Browns. They never succeed at anything, and never get better even though they continually set themselves up for another go.
I'm not sure the fault is with the "Charlie Browns". The government used to use Civil Servants to do all of the work. They were painted as costly, inflexible and expensive, so a lot got kicked out and contracting companies brought in. Those were then replaced with others and so on and so on. None of it worked and the problems have only got worse. The one constant in all of this is the government, it's almost as if they're causing the constant cycle of cock ups.
Nope. As said everyone in Government is a contractor these days so when something goes FUBAR they just move on from that contract to the next. Leaving both the contractor and the Gov department to merrily repeat the TITSUP FUBAR incident ad infinitum.
SNAFU.
"Leaving both the contractor and the Gov department to merrily repeat the TITSUP FUBAR incident ad infinitum"
Back when I was a consultant, I had my share of "project management learning experiences". But I a learnt from them. Others learnt from them better than I did and did larger and larger and more and more critical projects, and became good at it!
Using a contractor doesn't mean you can't get very experienced programme managers, with good and hard-working sub-project managers. But you have to pay for them, of course -- good ones are deservedly expensive!
The question we should be asking is not "why was this given to contractors" but "why was the low bid chosen, instead of properly assessing the experience of the key staff and the company and paying for repeatable quality".
Because everything is about saving money now.
And it's more important to the recruiters that you have the rigtht certs now, they don't really care if you know how to use them or now.
You can't measure experience very easily so it gets ignored. Much easier to tick the cert boxes.
"First day launch on the day that people absolutely needed it ?"
No, the system was already up and running when I renewed my licence a couple of months ago. I dipped-in just for a look - admittedly not to get a code - and it was fine.
The problem is the PR department got all the media to report it at the same time, resulting in the servers taking an atypical big hit for a day or so while lots of people came along for a quick look.
I went on, just now for the first time, and it worked first time.
However, it's confusing. To get your code it says "Share your License information". Well how do I know that is what it'd be for this code? Plus, getting on to the site, if I didn't put the www. before the URL it wouldn't load. That's poor.
On the plus side, the document you get is nicely laid out and straight forward.
Not at the DVLA, at the fucking British in general!
1) All countries in the EU use the same Driving licence format.
2) Britain is the only country that ever had a ruddy paper bit.
3) It's never caused any problem to any other European license holder anywhere in the world to hire a car with only the placcy bit. No codes, no online site, no nothing.
4) The only place on the entire bleedin' planet that I've ever been asked for the paper section when hiring a car with a UK license is, er, the UK. (This was slightly embarrassing as, since I'd never needed it before, I didn't bloody have it with me in the country!).
Why the fuck do we always have to overcomplicate everything?
I *think* that European law (the directive that introduced this format of the [card] license maybe?) said that endorsements couldn't be stored on the license, so the UK government said "we'll stick the endorsements on this bit of paper, which isn't part of the license. Also the license isn't valid without the bit of paper. This is fine, there is no contradiciton here. Shut up"
So rather than just obey the law, they have spent millions uselessly circumventing it. You may be familiar with similar stories.
Previous holidays in Florida, when hiring a car at say, aAlamo, they have always asked for both plastic and paper part of Driving Licence. Off to Florida again on Friday, have retained now-obsolete paper bit of licence. Did (eventually) manage to get on DVLA website and have printed result of search. So will take all three items with to car hire on Friday.
Agree with all commentard on the p*ss-poor performance of DVLA and their website - if I came up with that result here at work, I would shortly be looking for alternaive employment...........!!!!
1) All countries in the EU use the same Driving licence format.
2) Britain is the only country that ever had a ruddy paper bit.
There were two standard formats specified in the mid-90's, and only in the past two years has the plastic one become the only type. Places like France still use a paper licence and France has said that it doens't plan to change all licences to plastic in the short term.
There are other differences. I had a UK licence which I exchanged for a French one, when filling out car insurance details it asked for the date I passed the test, and rejected it because it is < 18 years after my DOB. Impossible in France, not in the UK where you can get a licence at 17. The reverse situation could happen for motorbike licences. It's certainly not correct to assume that the EU is a big happy harmonised family with just the UK being difficult.
> Places like France still use a paper licence and France has said that it doens't plan to change all licences to plastic in the short term.
New licences being issued in France are plastic.
The old paper ones are of course still valid, same as elsewhere (expiry issues aside where applicable).
> when filling out car insurance details it asked for the date I passed the test, and rejected it because it is < 18 years after my DOB.
That's a problem with your insurance company policies (or more likely, their misspecced software). Nothing to do with the EU or local laws, etc. I presume you would still have been able to get insurance, after speaking to some actual human (or Frenchman) able to override the shoddy software.
That's a problem with your insurance company policies (or more likely, their misspecced software). Nothing to do with the EU or local laws, etc. I presume you would still have been able to get insurance, after speaking to some actual human
Oh yes, it was entirely down to the software. The person just said "well, we'll have to lie about when you passed your test". My point is that it shows that the EU does not have consistent procedures where only the UK is out of step and being difficult. Its different in every country, but the tw*ts who write the software, for the DVLA and elsewhere, have no clue. Just like American website software which assumes every address must have a State field.
"We have saved a fortune by introducing this central point by which everyone can easily access thier details. As a result, further savings have been made by reconfiguring our personnell numbers"
"Due to unforseen* circumstances this site is currrently unavailable - as we have also binned all those who would have been on phones and screens, tough shit.
We have now given it all to Capita to run and are drying our hands having just washed them of any possible connection to the shit you are currently in."
[Coming soon, more systems to alienate and consfuse]
As long as the DVLA checking system remains up and running 24/7 and can cope with any level of demand placed upon it, everything will be just fine. At times when it is not able to cope, expect long queues, frantic telephone calls and drivers giving up and going by public transport instead.
In the end, it just depends how good DVLA's IT infrastructure turns out to be.
They could have anticipated the early overload. No doubt the site is dimensioned for 'normal' loads. If I had been project manager, I would just hire 2 or 3 times the server load capacity for a month or so - plenty of providers of that service. I suspect though that the security requirements and the cost of the risk assessment put the kibosh on that approach.
Next time I hire a car, I think I will go to the extra trouble if it's possible, to get a printout of my driving licence record the previous day, along with the required reference number for the hirer. At least that way, if they are unable to get online for some reason when I turn up, they at least have a printed record of any points I may or may not have. Perhaps if they are busy or just short of customers at that time, they may accept this print out at face value, without waiting until the website comes back online again before they hand the keys over.
I know this new system is a bit of a faff and a hassle, especially for people who do not have internet access, but I would imagine this is a sign of things to come as more and more government services come online under the " digital by default " program being driven on by GDS.
"drivers giving up and going by public transport instead."
Hmmmm....did you just hit the nail on the head? Combine complicated bureaucracy with the trend for "adjusting" roads with various hazards to slow you down/make roads safer, badly timed traffic lights and various town planner road schemes created by non-drivers and maybe we have the Government "nudge unit" pushing us away from driving at all unless it's essential.
Has anyone got any spare tinfoil? My hat seems to be leaking.
Nothing wrong with the DVLA site. It works exactly as we planned and the only thing wrong is that the 'public' is now using it. We designed it just to work on two browsers, Internet Explorer 5 and Safari 1 so if you don't have those then tough. We were going to develop a new technology WAP version but the DVLA rejected the £150m price tag for it.
Your partner in technology,
Capita
I have hired cars in the UK, Europe and USA endless times over the last decade, and despite diligently carrying my crumpled paper licence, can't ever remember anyone showing the faintest interest in it (or indeed in any info on a plastic licence beyond the number on it for their records) . Last time I hired, in the USA last week, my wife was good to drive and they didn't even want to glance at her licence. I guess I'm fairly happy that a car hire place that doesn't have an Internet connection won't care about 3 speeding points. But.......
What total idiot thought a one time 72 hour password made any sense whatsoever? Why 72 hours? Why a one time code? Surely the simplest thing would be a website that you put a driver number into and it comes back with a nice binary 'yes this is valid and the driver isn't banned' or ''no this is fake'. OK you need a separate system for allowing you to browse your own licence details, but if your employer needs to know, you would just stroll over to transport, and instead of showing a bored transport manager your creased greenery, you would just bring it up on the screen in their presence. Simples.
I tried this way back when it was first mentioned and worked perfectly, Yesterday R4 had a moan about and several news websites droned on it was broken. I tried last night 23;30 and it was almost instant. The car hite info I received today said that I would need the code. No problems, any rush will be over by now, so at 9:23 this morning I entered my info and got the nice PDF. Took seconds to get the data.
I'm convinced the only reason it's failing is because every bastard is out there wondering if it works rather than just the people needing it. How much over provision should the DVLA provide just so Joe Git can check the details he already knows?
As for paper. Every time I have hired a car in the USA and Switzerland I have had to provide the paper counterpart, but never in the EU.
Never had a problem taxing a car online, no problem with this site either. OK a statistically valid sample of one but works for me.
I'm still waiting on how they're going to stop HR departments from looking at employee's records. HR have copies of most people's driving licences if you're likely to drive for work, they already know your NINO.
Having a statement on the website saying 'You should only use this service to view or share your own driving licence.' doesn't prevent anything.
Why do rental car companies supposedly need to interrogate British driving licence holders' driving records and not the licence details of drivers from other countries?
In France your insurance company and car rental firms have no right to know how many points you have.
This seems to be the result of UK insurance company lobbying ...
I can categorically state from experience that UK licence holders do not get cheaper car hire deals abroad than people with licences from other countries.
That is not the case.
Try one of the consolidators like Auto Europe or Holiday Autos, give them different countries of residence/licence when requesting a quote and the rental fees change. The UK is generally one of the lower ones, people with Greek and Italian addresses get charged more.
I obtained my code just now without any difficulty. But why does it have to expire after 72 hours? That severely restricts usability while travelling outside the UK with limited internet or phone access. Why can't I have the choice to allow the code to remain valid until I choose to revoke it, for example by signing in again and cancelling the old code or generating a new one? D'oh! it could have been made so simple!
Anon, as I have just left feedback to this effect on the DVLA website, and we all know "they" read the Reg...
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Hi, I renewed my license at 70. Can anyone tell me, now Ive held my photo card license for three years IE coming up to 73. Will i need go through the same procedure of counter signature on back of photo, and must counter signature person, fill in a section on form when i re-apply at 73.I have a up to date Passport. Please guide me on this Procedure.?
Because Ive been told, as long as i give my passport Number on Form, that i don't need to change license Photo, so no need for counter signatures or form filling by a counter signature person.
Thanking you in anticipation Rob