Driver & Vehicle Agency - IT Project of the Year (Public Sector)
IT Project of the Year (Public Sector) - ICT Awards
Background
Northgate Managed Services works in partnership with the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) to provide a much more flexible and comprehensive service to its customers. Delivering a telephone and online booking system and supporting the ICT infrastructure of the DVA.
Using Compuware's management toolset Northgate can monitor the health and status of key systems and the performance of key applications in order to maintain an efficient system; as well as providing much more comprehensive monthly reporting to aid effective business decision making.
The Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) is an Executive Agency within the Department of the Environment and is responsible for licensing and testing vehicles and drivers in Northern Ireland. It operates 15 test centres, carrying out over 500 000 road worthiness checks and over 40 000 driving tests a year.
The agency's strategic objectives are to:
- Improve progressively the efficiency and effectiveness with which it operates systems of testing for both vehicles and drivers; and
- Ascertain customer's requirements in the conduct and management of tests and use the data acquired to improve quality of service
The Business Challenge
The Government's 'Modernising Government' Agenda has placed ambitious but achievable targets on all government organisations to achieve and deliver better public services. A key aspect of the achievement of the agenda is the use of IT within the public sector, both to improve efficiency and the delivery of public services.
Prior to its partnership with Northgate, the DVA offered a limited booking service. Test booking arrangements were largely paper based and delivered to the counter or by post at each of the Agency's main test centres. There was no provision for telephone booking or payment by credit card. Administration procedures which supported the booking process, such as the preparation of management information, were also largely manual and time consuming. Therefore DVA set out the following requirements:
Provision of an IT infrastructure which would allow for the refurbishment of all DVA test centres with new computer controlled equipment
Provision of a booking service for tests which would improve service to customers and offer a more flexible, comprehensive service through:
- Telephone booking
- Internet booking system
- Counter transactions at 15 test centres
- Multiple payment options
- Extended operational hours
Improve the provision of management information by producing higher quality information through reporting i.e. system and adhoc, single data repository, program management and resource management.
Improve operational effectiveness and control by integrating the Agency's key processes and enhancing the level of financial integrity and operational control.
Fulfil DVA's commitment to the Government's target to increase the availability of electronic dealings with the public.
The Solution
Initially Northgate was part of a large consortium charged with refurbishing the DVA test centres with new computer controlled testing equipment. The new equipment enabled the agency to integrate a new computerised booking system with the testing system in order to provide a seamless transition from booking stage to test lane. Northgate subcontracted a company to develop the booking system application, and also to provide ongoing 2nd line application support services.
Northgate delivered the system which facilitates the centralised booking of vehicle and driver tests and centrally maintains it in Northgate's secure data centre at it's headquarters. A secondary site provides resilience in the event of a complete data centre failure. All servers have built in back up functionality therefore if any server fails; the other will take the additional workload. A complete tape backup solution was also included.
Designed to handle over 750 000 bookings per year, the new computerised booking system integrates with the vehicle testing system to ensure a seamless service. It does this by centrally managing appointments and transferring appointments to each server in the 15 test centres. Test results are replicated to the Booking system and forwarded to DVA Licensing. All driver and vehicle information is provided by DVA Licensing through interfaces with the Booking Service.
Prior to the telephone booking service, customers contacted their local centre to make a booking. Booking times where extremely limited, making it more difficult for customers to book a test. Northgate deployed a call centre, located at its head office in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland. In addition to the 15 test centres, the call centre provides a dedicated central booking facility using the computerised system, which allows customers to select appointment dates and pay fees by credit card. The call centre utilises up to 40 operators and provides a service for up to 13 hours per day, 6 days a week. More recently an online booking service has been introduced which is available 24x7x365. Monthly availability is typically 100%.
Northgate installed the application software, hardware and telecommunication infrastructure for this project and on an ongoing basis delivers the IT managed service which provides full system, infrastructure and application hosting and support. Northgate is also responsible for all ICT services in each test centre including hardware, software and Local Area Network which offers the ability to record data from the testing equipment and prints pass/fail test certificates.
Over 250 users access the system from the Northgate Call Centre and DVA Test Centres with a further 1600+ users a day accessing the system via the internet.
The Driver and Vehicle Agency service level requirements are significantly high and based on ensuring high availability which is measured on a daily basis. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) however are based around application performance and transaction performance, all of which Northgate has responsibibility for delivering.
To maintain this service level, Northgate have deployed Compuware Vantage to provide end user experience monitoring, application performance and availability monitoring, system and network availability and utilisation information. The Compuware Vantage toolset is used throughout pre-release testing and load testing. It enables Northgate to proactively monitor all systems and applications to ensure high availability and performance levels. Compuware Vantage further provides visibility into the impact performance issues have by providing insight into how many users are impacted as well as understanding what locations are affected, ensuring an accurate response to customer needs. In addition it enables Northgate to provide much more meaningful monthly reporting to DVA to support business decision making, reducing monthly workload considerably.
One example of its effectiveness was when 1 year ago DVA were experiencing a performance issue. Vantage Agentless tool was used to identify a disc space issue caused by long running calls. This enabled Northgate to focus resources and review key transactions in order to fix the issue quickly.
Key Results
Northgate has been working in partnership with the DVA since 2001 to ensure continuous improvement in both service and system management. In 2008 Northgate's service and system provision was extended for another 2 years due to the success of the initial 5 year contract.
The new computer controlled testing equipment has resulted in computerised certificate issuing and central data retention and reporting facilities. This has resulted in Northgate delivering accountability and productivity to DVA through reduced costs, improved productivity, and a much more efficient and speedy testing process. The dedicated booking service, extended hours and reminder service delivers a greatly improved customer service.
Data backup facilities and the server functionality solution has improved system security and ensures maximum availability of services to customers and internal users, thus less time and money is spent ensuring the system is working properly.
The booking service project has used technology to transform the customer experience of the Driver & Vehicle Agency. Impacting on a large majority of the population, it has provided a more flexible and comprehensive service to customers. To date the call centre has taken over 1.5 million bookings and Northgate recently won IT Project of the Year (Public Sector) for its development of the Driver and Vehicle Agency booking system, delivering what judges felt to be an outstanding application of business technology. In addition the booking process has been awarded ISO9002 accreditation.
Significant performance improvements have been recognised through the deployment of Compuware Vantage service management tools including:
- IT resources reduced by 30%
- Service penalties reduced by 100%
- Reduced monthly report workload - typically 4-5 days per month now reduced to approximately 2 days per month
- Call handlers reduced by 25%
Booking Services Manager from the DVA explains why the project has been a success for this public sector agency:
"The booking of Driver and Vehicle tests in Northern Ireland depends on the availability of systems hosted by Northgate. The health and well being of these systems can not be left to chance. Northgate not only monitor the health and status of systems from a hardware and operating system perspective but also monitor the performance of the application, and use this information to review trends in performance and isolate problematic systems or software. Northgate's dedicated team ensure systems are secure and backed up, available for public, Call centre and test centre access to appointments and appointment booking through continual monitoring and management of the systems, applications and back office services such as Anti Virus, security and backups."
"It is critical to DVA to have service, project and system information available proactively and reactively. Northgate provide a dedicated Service Delivery Manager who not only ensures day to day operations are carefully monitored and controlled, but also provides service information for review on a monthly basis or on-demand if the situation requires it. This is particularly important when the systems and services are hosted and managed outside of our own premises."
