Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
From Free net encyclopedia
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (the DVLA) is an executive agency of the Department for Transport in Great Britain. It is responsible for maintaining a database of drivers and vehicles in Great Britain, its counterpart in Northern Ireland is Driver and Vehicle Licensing Northern Ireland (DVLNI) . The agency issues driving licences, organises collection of vehicle excise duty (also known as road tax) and sells cherished marks (private number plates).
The DVLA is based at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre (DVLC) in Morriston, which is located in Swansea, south Wales.
Data held by DVLA is used in many ways. For example, cars caught entering central London without paying the congestion charge or driving too fast on a road with speed cameras are matched to their owners using the DVLA database. In 2004 the DVLA made the vehicle database available to the private sector. This controversial move has been widely criticised in the UK press and in parliament as being a threat to privacy.
DVLA database
The current DVLA vehicles database was built by EDS under a 5 million pound contract signed in 1996, with a planned implementation date on October 1998, though actual implementation was delayed by a year. It uses a client-server architecture and uses the vehicle identification number, rather than the registration plate, as the primary key to track vehicles, eliminating the possibility of having multiple registrations for a single vehicle, a scam known as ghosting. However the accuracy of the data held remains a continuing problem.
The drivers database, developed in conjunction with the Police Information Technology Organisation and delivered in March 2002, enables the police to verify drivers' licences via the Police National Computer, and holds details of around 20 million photocard driving licences. This is an implementation of an automatic number plate recognition system.