Comment by that_guy_iain

Comment by that_guy_iain 2 days ago

> The system may or may not be complex but the data is has to store and transform is not. Because it handles drivers licenses. A function that has been done on pen and paper and filing cabinets.

It handles more than just driving licenses... The DVLA do more than just driving licenses.

> Since you imply you know more about UK budgets than I do - how much is the DVLA budgeted for IT operations like this and how much more would you give them to expect this problem solved?

It's not budgeted anything for this as far as I know. I believe it's handled by Government Digital Services which handles lots of the digital services for various departments. The budget for all of GDS is about 90 million most of which isn't for .gov.uk. A rewrite of that size I would expect to cost about 50-60 million in total but take several years.

skippyboxedhero a day ago

Any business which took 50-60m to rewrite something that simple wouldn't exist.

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kalleboo a day ago

I know of a large international retailer everyone here has heard of that had at least 3 aborted attempts to rewrite their 70's VAX-based warehouse management software stack (an internal attempt, an Indian outsource attempt and an SAP attempt) they spent that much at least with zero to show for it. They had all the issues with "too many sales in one day causing batches to not finish" and "but this warehouse wants to open 24/7..." and still couldn't get it rewritten

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- gunian a day ago
  
  couldn't get it rewritten as in the logic was impossible or more like with a specific budget, random set of KPIs etc?
  idk for some reason I feel like projects like this should be allowed more flexibility by shareholders
  
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that_guy_iain a day ago

That simple? You probably couldn't even list all the things the DVLA is responsible for. I also doubt you could list all the laws and policies relating to driver licenses.
And you would be shocked at how expensive big rewrites actually are.

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nsteel a day ago

What? Like Fujitsu? Still going strong bidding on gov contracts and providing garbage.

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