Do anyone know what the story is with the forthcoming MOT tests and certificates which will go on national database or whatevers happening?
in laymans terms.
tia
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Still a long way behind schedule. Siemens (SBS) are developing it and its about two years behind schedule. For ideological reasons the government kept the DoT out of its development (private sector always knows better you see) but SBS 'forgot' a few things! Unfortunately IT companies (even private sector and foreign owned - surely the dream ticket?) don't understand much about the motor trade. All the IT kit that was sent out to garages (and some still in warehouses) about two-three years ago is now out of date (dial-up modem, ribbon printers etc!).
I have had a demo of the proposed system. It needs a secure 'smart card' to activate it and only allows one test to be 'open' at a time. If you fail on a bulb then tester has to enter failure details, log and print a fail certificate, and then go back to your car, change bulb, log on and enter all details again, then print a pass certificate.
I understand that this debacle has already resulted in the failure of two companies associated with its development. I think Autodata are now getting involved (or want to).
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Typical large scale UK government IT project - degenerated into an expensive farce - well behind schedule, well over budget and once introduced will cause all kinds of problems for another 2 years until they iron the bugs out.
I believe the network is based on ISDN - expensive to run, comparatively slow compared to something like ADSL and now well out of date.
Conceptually the system is only a relatively simple database, but no doubt its been bloated out and over complicated in order to extort more money out of the government.
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Typical large scale UK government IT project - degenerated into an expensive farce - well behind schedule, well over budget and once introduced will cause all kinds of problems for another 2 years until they iron the bugs out. I believe the network is based on ISDN - expensive to run, comparatively slow compared to something like ADSL and now well out of date. Conceptually the system is only a relatively simple database, but no doubt its been bloated out and over complicated in order to extort more money out of the government.
This project is NOTHING TO DO with the GOVERNMENT beyond the fact that they will be paying the bill. Can't people understand that? It is run as a PFI with VOSA, but the DoT people were purposely kept out of it. They haven't advised SBS nor did they specify the system. SBS were invited to look at the 'old' paper-based system and devise and implement one of their own design.
Neither is it a "relatively simple database"! The price was fixed at the outset and SBS will not be paid until the system is working properly - there won't be an opportunity to extort more money from the government.
The mistake that was made is that SBS didn't understand how the MoT system operates in this country and the first trial system was vistually unusable. If they had let the DoT guys who run the present MoT system (which is actually cheap, well design and very efficient) advise them then things might be different.
ISDN was chosen because it is very common in Germany and Siemens make ISDN equipment and could obviously profit from this aspect of the contract.
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Bromptonaut:
Did you see the bit on the web site that said:
. More rigorous testing because system design enforces MOT Scheme rules (eg compulsory full re-test).
Bang goes the ability to get a new tyre fitted etc., and show it to the MOT tester and, under the 'free re-test if brought back in 7 days', that in practice meant he just satisfied himself that the failure cause had been removed, get an MOT certificate.
Going to be more expensive, me-thinks.
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Got that bit wrong. Just read some notes and tyres have until end of next day to be changed and shown to the MOT man for a free cert.
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I don't know why they didn't go for some web-based system. Rather than messing around with ISDN, the garage fires up their PC, connects to the net, goes to a secure website and fills in the details. New certificate arrives in the post or is printed there and then.
Nothing especially complicated, extra time could be spent on fixing bugs and making it secure.
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This pretty much what happens here in New Zealand. The test is still marked up on a paper form, and when the car passes, the details are entered into the website. All the testing centres and garages go to the same place, so the information is available to anyone with a login. I recently had the car checked and passed at a garage, but went to a testing centre to pay road tax etc. The testing centre just entered the car registration number and noted that the test had been passed, so issued the road tax label. Security is dealt with by managing the login passwords. Like all computerised systems, statistics can easily be kept, and used to pick up any anomalies.
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I don't know why they didn't go for some web-based system.
The web probably wasn't around when the system was first specified!
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ISDN was chosen because it is very common in Germany and Siemens make ISDN equipment and could obviously profit from this aspect of the contract.
Probably true, but don't forget that until the last year or so, huge chunks of the country didn't have broadband, but did have ISDN. When the system was specified, broadband would have been a rarity.
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>>I believe the network is based on ISDN - expensive to run, comparatively slow compared to something like ADSL and now well out of date.
Upgrading from one to the other is not difficult. If you wait until your deals are close to expiry, it will probably even pay for itself.
I canb't think offhand that there can be any restriction within the technical architecture of the system which would be impacted by a change in technology within the network - especially given that xDSL is always on.
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The sytem should have been web-based, then it wouldn't matter if it was ISDN, Cable, Phoneline ADSl or whatever and would be future proof. Everyone in IT knew that ISDN was starting to die about 8 years ago, when pre-press started to phase it out, and ISDN web access was just a passing fad. A web based system would have been easily integrated with other systems and is an interface that most people are already familiar with.
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I think you've got your technologies in a knot. "web-based" has nothing to do with the WAN technology. I assume that you mean accessible from a web browser - which if anything is related to the LAN and application front end, not WAN communications.
ISDN was not just a "passing fad" it resolved various technical issues and for some uses was a better solution than DSL.
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I can't think offhand that there can be any restriction within the technical architecture of the system which would be impacted by a change in technology within the network - especially given that xDSL is always on.
The ISDN-based system may well have been set up to use a direct-dial connection to a secure server within the MoT system. Going through the public IP network offered by xDSL opens up a whole range of security issues which wouldn't be present with a point-to-point connection.
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To switch from point to point ISDN (which actually isn't. it just looks like it) to xDSL based VPN would not (or at least, should not) have represented a significant issue.
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