DVSA seeks technology boss with focus on booking system • The Register

The UK's Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is recruiting a chief digital and information officer, partly to help sort out its bot-ridden practical driving test booking system. "You will lead a critical portfolio that supports DVSA's plan (launched in December 2024) to reduce driving test waiting times, protect learner drivers from exploitation, and improve the customer booking system," stated chief executive Beverley Warmington, who joined the agency at the end of last year.

Warmington said the agency plans to double the size of its digital, data, and technology directorate, and bring more services in-house. Applications for the job, which has a salary of £95,000, close on February 22.

In December, the National Audit Office (NAO) criticized the DVSA over long waits for its practical driving tests. The NAO said these were primarily down to a lack of examiners but the situation was worsened by the agency's 18-year-old booking system being vulnerable to targeting by third-party cancellation checkers and slot resellers. It found some candidates paid up to £500 to secure a test that costs £62 on weekdays.

The government is changing the rules this spring so that tests can only be booked by candidates themselves, cutting out instructors and businesses, as well as limiting changes to a booking. The new chief digital and information officer will take over from Becky Thomas, who is retiring. "I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved together as an agency," she wrote in a recent GOV.UK blog post. Of the booking problems, she said: "Our teams are working at pace to design, build, and deliver improvements to the current system following extensive consultation with our customers and the driver training industry."

Thomas highlighted other successes, including DVSA's introduction of British sign language bookings for driving theory tests and allowing payments with Apple Pay and Google Pay. She added that more than six million people have signed up for free text or email alerts to remind them about their MOT, the legally required annual roadworthiness check named after the former Ministry of Transport. DVSA introduced the reminders in 2017.