In March 2020, the DVSA announced that driving tests were suspended for up to three months due to the Covid-19 crisis. However, tests would still be available for critical workers. Alongside UiPath and AWS, BJSS delivered an automation solution to rapidly review and process over 48,000 requests for urgent critical worker tests in days instead of months. This vital engagement has helped the DVSA to get critical workers out on the roads.

Challenge 

Following the announcement that driving tests would still be available for critical workers during the Covid-19 crisis, the DVSA received an influx of over 48,000 free-text e-mail requests from candidates. As a result, the agency faced a significant administrative task to manually review and process all of the requests. The DVSA wanted to process the requests as quickly as possible so it created a web form for candidates to complete. However, it required an automation solution to process the web forms.

Solution 

With time of the essence, BJSS partnered with UiPath and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deploy RPA (Robotic Process Automation) digital workers for the DVSA. From the client’s front-end web porta, incoming data was stored in AWS, where it was accessed and read by the software robots. This automated the process of managing requests, filtering requests by test category, validating urgent requests, processing ID images via Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and providing an appropriate response to exceptions. All without any duplication and with errors minimised.

The service was developed in just five weeks. Hosting the service and data in the AWS cloud meant the solution could be stood up incredibly quickly and seamlessly enable the important work of the DVSA to during a period of national crisis. And, with so many records to process, AWS allowed for additional capacity to be added in real-time to meet the urgent demand.  

Benefits 

Thousands of test requests were processed resulting in the automatic booking of thousands of critical workers’ driving tests. Digital workers filtered rejections and queued manual intervention requirements. Rolling out the solution cleared the backlog in just 10 days, reducing the process by several months and enabling DVSA staff to concentrate on higher value tasks.

 

“Despite the disruption caused by coronavirus, we adapted quickly to changes in our services and working arrangements. We produced an excellent new service in record time.”
 
Paul Moran
Head of Service Design and User Research, DVSA