Kainos & DVSA: Improving road safety together Increasing road safety ...

Kainos Case Study

Kainos & DVSA: Improving road safety together Increasing road safety by reducing the number of late MOTs The Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) employs around 4,600 people across the UK, including driver, vehicle and traffic examiners, customer service agents and corporate services professionals. As one of the Agency’s main objectives is to reduce the number of late MOTs, the DVSA engaged with Kainos to research, develop and build a solution: the MOT Reminders service.

The Background DVSA has been working in partnership with Kainos since 2014 to drive MOT modernisation. This has included DVSA and Kainos replacing the national mainframe-based MOT system with a modern award-winning digital service. This is helping them to reduce operational costs and is improving the service provided for testers. Kainos has also helped DVSA to develop and implement the Check MOT history service which has become the first citizen-facing online service developed as part

DVSA’s priority is to help you keep your vehicle safe to drive. It’s important that vehicles are roadworthy every day and the annual MOT is an important part of that. The new reminders will help drivers stay safe - and legal. DVSA Chief Executive, Gareth Llewellyn

of DVSA’s digitisation strategy. The service allows car owners and buyers to access a vehicle’s MOT history online and the due date of the vehicle’s next MOT test. The service is also being extended to include vehicle recall information. The latest project in this partnership between DVSA and Kainos addresses the problem of overdue MOTs and, by default, the issues then created by illegal and unsafe vehicles on UK roads.

The Challenges: Road Safety In 2015/16 around 28% of vehicles were late for their MOT at any one time – the majority of which were a week or more overdue. Statistics show that, for vehicles tested a week or more late, the likelihood of failure increases by up to a third.

The Agency’s 3 strategic aims Enable a lifetime of safe driving

Help people to keep their vehicles safe to drive Protect people from unsafe drivers and vehicles

Kainos & DVSA: MOT Reminder Service – reducing the number of late MOTs

Cultural Attitudes The DVSA are eager to drive a cultural shift within the Agency and with car drivers. By creating and enabling positive lines of communication they hope to encourage citizens not to view DVSA as an enforcer but rather as an enabler of safety on UK roads.

The research for this project required a broad reach to engage directly with the motoring public at large. This gave us invaluable insight into attitudes in general, the MOT test specifically and how it contributes to vehicle safety. The research also had the wider aim and intention of not only informing the Reminders service, but also helping to bring DVSA and citizens together in a way that would further enable the DVSA to deliver a new breed of public-facing services.

Researching a User-focused Solution

Consult and Analyse

Design

Service

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Kainos began by undertaking research to identify why so many vehicles are late in having an MOT test. The research identified that the vast majority of late MOT tests are as a result of lack of awareness that a test is due.

Forgot

At any one time, up to 28% of cars will be overdue an MOT. Research shows that the vast majority of these aren’t down to people deliberately not getting an MOT – rather, they just need to be reminded to get it done on time. Neil Barlow, MOT Service Manager

Implement

Project Management

Away from home Personal reasons

REASONS FOR FORGETTING

Finance issue

The Kainos Approach

Misunderstood first MOT of 3 year old car

Kainos’ end-to-end approach to developing digital services began with discovering the needs of the agency and the end users – for DVSA services this is traditionally the motor trade.

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Enabling Continuous Improvement

The Solution Motorists can now easily subscribe to the free, online Get MOT reminders service using just the vehicle registration and an email address or mobile number. People who sign up to the service will receive their first reminder 4 weeks before the MOT is due, a second reminder 2 weeks before and a third reminder on the due date of their MOT (if their MOT is still outstanding).

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WEEKS

WEEKS

WEEKS

FIRST REMINDER

SECOND REMINDER

THIRD REMINDER

The Reminders service underwent thorough testing in ‘private beta’, with over 200,000 people using and providing feedback on the service. As a result of early user feedback the service has been extended to offer reminders by text message in addition to email.

The service will continue to be extended to reflect user feedback and could include some of the following additional features: •

To simplify the registration of multiple vehicles

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To include vehicles that need more than one MOT a year, such as taxis

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To include vehicles that need an annual test instead of an MOT, such as lorries, buses and coaches

Kainos Innovation The MOT Reminders service is the first of DVSA’s digital services to leverage serverless technology. This technology simplifies the architecture of the service, minimises the run cost and leverages the dynamic scaling characteristics of Amazon Web Services Lambda to support the demand for the service.

We will continue to make changes in line with user feedback to make the service easier to use, helping drivers, riders and others with an interest in the vehicles make good use of the information available. Neil Barlow, DVSA MOT Service Manager

Reusing Existing Infrastructure The MOT Reminders service was one of the first, and currently the heaviest, user of Gov.uk Notify service across government.

Gov.uk Notify, which brokers the transmission of the email and text reminders, is a GDS hosted service that is used by many digital services across government.

By redeploying the service in this way, Kainos has helped DVSA to avoid negotiating separately with email and SMS service providers.


The Benefits

Kainos & DVSA: Working Together

For the user, the motoring public, the benefits are a more effective means of remembering to MOT their vehicle that helps them to remain safe and legal on the road.

The Kainos approach, and now well-established working relationship with DVSA, is helping to drive the UK government’s aim of joined up, digital thinking to deliver innovative services on the basis of researched user needs. With Kainos’ expertise, experience and knowledge, DVSA are setting the pace when it comes to digital transformation.

A survey of 1186 users identified that many found the service to be ‘fine’ or ‘excellent’ with no further improvements needed. A customer satisfaction survey of almost 17,000 users found that many users where ‘satisfied’ and most users were ‘very satisfied’. For the DVSA, the benefit goes beyond the practical need to efficiently and effectively enable drivers to stay compliant with legal requirements to keep people safe on UK roads. The new Get MOT reminders service, together with the Check MOT history service, is the second public-facing digital service from the DVSA and is bringing the Agency increasingly closer to the motorist.

Initial results from the private beta suggest the Get MOT reminders service has a significant impact on reducing the number of late MOT tests. With this public launch of the service I expect to see this trend continuing, although it will take some time for the real impact to be fully quantifiable as the MOT is an annual test. Neil Barlow, MOT Service Manager

Kainos has worked with DVSA to build and maintain a oneteam ethos that underpins an open and collaborative way of working to deliver digital services. Government Digital Services (GDS) – the body tasked with overseeing the digital transformation of UK Government services – hailed the MOT project as “…one of the best agile projects we have seen in flight in government to date, and can be seen as an exemplar of the benefits of working collaboratively in an agile way.”

Many years ago we had a reminder service – but it was never popular, so didn’t achieve what we needed. This new service has been driven by understanding user needs and therefore has met them better – which means it works! The service is better thought through and by working as part of the ‘one team’ ethos we have made it a success. Chris Price, Product Manager, MOT Testing Service

Register for your MOT Reminder at www.gov.uk/mot-reminder

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