Why Some DVLA Digital Services Don't Work at Night
owl writes:
[Ed. note: DVLA == Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency]
https://dafyddvaughan.uk/blog/2025/why-some-dvla-digital-services-dont-work-at-night/
Every few months or so, somebody asks on social media why a particular DVLA digital service is turned off over night. Why is it, in the 21st century, a newish online service only operates for some hours of the day? Rather than answering it every time, I've decided to write this post, so I can point people at it in future.
It's also a great case study to show why making government services digitally native can be quite complicated. Unless you're a start up, you're rarely working in a greenfield environment, and have legacy technology and old working practices to contend with. Transforming government services isn't as easy as the tech bros and billionaires make it out to be.
[...] DVLA is around 60 years old and manages driving licences and vehicle records for England, Scotland and Cymru.
At the time, many of DVLA's services - particularly those relating to driving licences were still backed by an old IBM mainframe from the 1980s - fondly known as Drivers-90 (or D90 for short). D90 was your typical mainframe - code written in COBOL using the ADABAS database package. Most data processing happened 'offline' - through batch jobs which ran during an overnight window.
In the early 2000s, there had been an attempt by DVLA's IT suppliers to modernise the systems. They'd designed a new set of systems using Java and WebLogic, with Oracle Databases - which they referred to as the New Systems Landscape (or NSL). To speed up the migration, they'd used tools to automatically convert the code and database structures.
As often happens in large behind-the-scenes IT modernisation projects, this upgrade effort ran out of energy and money, so it never finished. This left a complex infrastructure in place - with some services using the new architecture, some using the mainframe, and some using both at the same time.
[...] It's now 2024 - 10 years on from the launch of the first service. The legacy infrastructure, which really should have been replaced by now, is probably still the reason why the services are still offline overnight.
Is this acceptable? Not really. Is it understandable? Absolutely.
Legacy tech is complicated. It's one of the biggest barriers for organisations undertaking digital transformation.
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