25-01-05 VOSA Double Winners at e-Government Awards
VOSA’s Operator Licensing development team and its Operator Self Service development has just won 2 out of the 3 top awards open to Government Departments in the prestigious e-Government 2004 competition. In one category they beat off all comers from government, councils and public bodies.
The awards, announced at a dinner in London on 19 January 2005, are a yardstick for UK excellence in e-Government and are supported by the Cabinet Office and The Society of Information Technology Management. They praise and recognise the best in UK e-Government and highlight the important contributions made by e-Government to central and local Government service strategy
VOSA’s Operator licensing self-service system took the top award, winning the e-Government service uptake: Excellence in usership / user growth. The award was presented by Ian Watmore, Head of e-Government, Cabinet Office e-Government Unit. The project team also won the e-Government excellence team award.
VOSA’s Chief Executive, Stephen Tetlow commenting on the awards said:
” This is a fantastic win. It shows just what can be done and the skills we have in the business and shows the way ahead for transforming our customer service. We have a very exciting time ahead of us”
Bill Buckley, VOSA’s National Licensing Director, also commented:
“This is a tremendous result for VOSA as a whole and a fantastic achievement and reward for all the effort and dedication put in by the team which delivered the whole development.”
These two citations from the award ceremony reveal just why Operator Self Service was a double winner.
“The project has transformed the service for the commercial vehicle operator industry (110,000 businesses; 450,000 vehicles). It is the first government regulatory service which has given the industry full accountability for maintaining its own data, allowing licence holders to transact a major part of their business with the government on a true self-service basis, with real time access to and ability to amend their data 24x7. Over 46% of all vehicle transactions are now on-line, far exceeding the first year target of 25%.”
“Feedback from users has been excellent... In the words of a large national operator "The system has worked very well and has drastically reduced paperwork and the time delay in getting licence discs (from 14 days to a couple of minutes)."”
This is not the first award that VOSA has received for their Licensing system. In June last year VOSA was runner up in the Government Computing BT/Syntegra Awards for innovation 2004.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
This is the first e-Government awards competition and is aimed at recognising the best in UK e-Government and is supported by the Cabinet Office e-Government unit. The competition was open to local councils, central government and non-departmental bodies. There were 8 categories and 40 finalists out of 140 entries.
The results were announced at a dinner in London on 19 Jan 2005, attended by many from Government IT development and senior personnel. Those attending from DfT included Permanent Secretary, David Rowlands; Director of Logistics and Maritime Transport, Brian Wadsworth; Driver Vehicle Operator Director General, Stephen Hickey; and VOSA’s Chief Executive, Stephen Tetlow and National Licensing Director, Bill Buckley
VOSA’s self-service system offers goods vehicle operators (and just launched last week, 20 January 2005, bus and coach operators) direct access to their Operator licence data, online, from home or office, and enables them to make changes to their licences, which previously required lengthy paper transactions and input by VOSA staff. It is among the first real-time transactional Government services available to business. More than 11,000 operators are already registered to use the service and in December 2004 46% of all goods vehicle licence transactions were done on-line by the operators themselves.
The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA )is responsible for:
- Processing applications for licences to operate lorries and buses and registering bus services
- Operating and administering testing schemes for all vehicles, including the supervision of the MOT testing scheme
- Enforcing the law on vehicles to ensure that they comply with legal standards and regulations
- Enforcing drivers' hours and licensing requirements
- Supporting Traffic Commissioners to help them make informed decisions on operator licensing, vocational drivers and bus registration requirements
- Providing training and advice for commercial operators
- Investigating vehicle accident, defects and recalls.
Page last updated: 25/09/2006