Comment by arjie
While these explanations are plausible, certain other things I've encountered make me believe that deeper reasons underlie even these reasons. When I lived in the UK in 2017 as a foreigner, all applications for a driving licence as a foreigner on a T2-ICT visa had to be sent over for a couple of weeks and you had to include your passport and Biometric Residence Permit and everything. By comparison, I was able to get my driving licence at the California DMV pretty easily even as a foreigner and my passport and so on were photocopied and not retained. This drastic difference in service ability between the DVLA and a notoriously disliked American government service lead me to believe that the proximal technical causes for this are downstream from organizational choices for how to deliver service.
> downstream from organizational choices for how to deliver service
100000%. They're a monopoly service you must interact with or get fined and (eventually) locked up. They have zero incentive to do a particularly good job. Some orgs in this situation are just well run and do a good job, but there's no competitive pressure for them to do so.