The latest move to digitise everything has seen the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency announce that they are looking to put our driving licences onto a smartphone app.
Following a summer when thousands of Brits travelled abroad with their key vaccination details stored safely on an app on their phones, the DVLA seem keen to cash in on the digital action with a move to make paper certification a thing of the past.
While the initial plans are to move provisional cards onto the app by 2024, the DVLA Strategic Plan 2021 to 2024 hints at further expansion of the scheme and secretary of state for transport Grant Shapps is quoted as saying that the move will make things ‘fairer, greener and more efficient’.
The UK government began their plans to move away from paper documentation in the summer of 2015 when they scrapped the paper counterpart of driving licences. MOTs and other vehicle documentation are also expected to move online as part of the strategy.
In a tweet Mr Shapps said: “Our transport network will be fairer, greener & more efficient thanks to our exciting new post-EU freedoms.
“We will introduce digital driving licences – moving provisional cards online, doing away with paper test certificates & bringing MOTs into the modern age.
“This is a golden chance to shake off the bureaucracy, invest in our future, and realise our potential with world-leading transport that benefits all of Britain.”
The DVLA holds records for than 49 million driving licence holders and issues 10 million new licences a year.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, warned that making everything digital could be open to fraud: "These days the one thing drivers are most likely to have with them is their phone, so using it to carry their driver's licence could be quite handy.
"The risk is that the more personal data we store on our phones the more tempting a target they become for thieves and hackers."