The DVLA joins forces with the Motor Insurers Bureau and IBM to tackle uninsured driving

Not only are uninsured drivers a significant potential danger to other road users; they also impose a financial burden on the majority of law-abiding motorists who do insure their vehicles. On average, the requirement to effectively subsidise uninsured drivers adds £30 to £50 to every annual motor insurance premium.

The 2004 Greenaway report outlined a number of proposals to reduce the prevalence of uninsured driving. A key recommendation of the report was to link the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) Vehicle Register with the insurance industry’s Motor Insurance Database. The latter is a co-operative database which holds vehicular policy records from all of the UK’s motor insurance companies. This integration would facilitate the rapid and efficient identification of uninsured motorists, allowing the police and other enforcement agencies to focus their limited resources on more persistent evaders on the road.

The Greenaway report’s recommendation led to the development of the Continuous Insurance Enforcement (CIE) initiative, a joint undertaking between central government and the motor insurance industry. In technical terms, the success of the CIE initiative depended on bringing together two large and complex databases: the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) Vehicle Register and the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) Motor Insurance Database. These two organisations needed to link their separate databases cost-effectively, accurately and in a manner that would comply with government restrictions on sharing sensitive data. They also faced also time and budgetary constraints, and a significant change-management exercise to introduce new business processes and ways of working.

According to Simon Tse, Chief Executive Officer of the DVLA, “As this is one of the top three initiatives for the British Insurers and Brokers Association (BIBA), and given the Secretary of State target to deliver by Q1 2011, CIE was a critical initiative for the DVLA.”

The overall objective of the CIE initiative is to reduce the number of uninsured drivers by at least 20 percent by 2018 and to contribute to reducing the MIB levy on insurance companies, which in 2010/11 was around £450 million. Research also suggests that there will be an indirect benefit to overall road safety, as statistics show that insured drivers are less likely to be involved in traffic collisions.

The legislative solution was to make it an offence for the registered keeper (or owner) of a vehicle to fail to either insure it or make a Statutory Off-Road Notification (SORN). As a result, it is now an offence for a car not to be insured, even if it is not being driven.

A jointly-managed database project
To support the enforcement of this legislation - and, in particular, to do so without relying on already overstretched police resources - the DVLA and MIB joined forces to share vehicle and insurance data and to create a set of business processes and workflows around them.

The DVLA engaged IBM to support its joint project with the MIB. Working with both parties, IBM developed a number of conceptual solutions. The chosen solution saw DVLA being responsible for integrating the information held in the two databases and handling the detection of potentially uninsured vehicles. The subsequent workflow would pass limited record details to the MIB, giving them sufficient information to send out advisory letters to keepers of uninsured vehicles without breaching data protection regulations.

The project had to bring together a joint public/private-sector team in a true partnership that would meet the expectations of a large and diverse set of stakeholders. From the outset, IBM adopted a highly collaborative approach, starting with a series of intensive joint DVLA/MIB/DfT workshops and team meetings led by IBM to ensure stakeholder alignment around the shape and scope of the solution. Establishing a common baseline of understanding in this way ensured that teams in separate locations could advance their part of the solution without diverging from the shared plans and vision.

Using workstreams to ensure success
The DVLA structured the project into a number of workstreams – regulatory, communications, business process, business organisation, data quality, business case, and technical delivery. Each DVLA workstream was assigned a leader alongside a counterpart from the MIB. IBM helped to define the boundaries between the MIB and DVLA solutions and set delivery responsibilities on each side. Regular face-to-face meetings were held to clarify and confirm the solution against the joint blueprint.

The quality of the vehicle and insurance records was critical to the success of the CIE initiative. At the feasibility stage, IBM established a workstream to examine data quality and monitor the level of uninsured vehicles. Early insights gained from this analysis work enabled the MIB and the DVLA to take action to improve data quality and reduce the risk of false positives. IBM’s use of matching algorithms enabled the solution to identify vehicles that are insured even if the vehicle registration mark (VRM) has been misspelt.

During the course of the project, new budgetary constraints required the DVLA to explore new cost-saving options with IBM - all while maintaining the same tight delivery schedule.

A tripartite steering group, consisting of the DfT, MIB and DVLA, was established to govern the project and provide a forum for the communication and escalation of project issues. Following the successful launch of the CIE solution, this forum oversees the ongoing service and plans future development.

Cracking down on uninsured driving
The CIE initiative was jointly delivered by DfT, DVLA, the MIB and IBM - on time and under budget. The first stage enabled the DVLA and the MIB to regularly monitor the insurance status for eligible registered vehicles, building up a picture of non-compliance behaviour and allowing the impact of advertising and awareness campaigns to be determined. The second stage enforcement release was delivered ahead of target, and now enables DVLA to take enforcement action against offenders. The third and final stage was the go-live launch in June 2011, which was backed an intensive, industry-funded publicity campaign using a variety of media.

The DVLA and the MIB can now see - from the record - whether an eligible vehicle has a valid associated insurance policy. In the case of an uninsured vehicle, they can then take steps to ensure that the registered keeper either insures the vehicle or makes a SORN declaration. This new visibility is a deterrent to potential offenders and should benefit all law-abiding motorists.

As David Hancock, Director of Enforcement at the DVLA explains, “The CIE initiative complements existing DVLA enforcement activities for Road Tax in a highly efficient and effective manner. The solution helps us send out a clear message that non-compliance with the law will not be tolerated, and it supports the DfT road safety agenda in making sure that road users are correctly insured.”

The solution is expected to reduce the number of uninsured drivers by at least 20 percent by 2018 and also to contribute significantly to reducing the MIB levy on insurance companies, providing multi-million pound savings.

Simon Tse concludes, “Within the DVLA, the CIE initiative is seen as a model for future projects: it achieved everything it set out to do, and IBM helped us to deliver it ahead of time and below budget.”