Recent content in Home on Dafydd Vaughan
By breaking the DVLA’s massive, 20-million-transaction paper logbook system into small slices - starting with commercial motor traders - we bypassed the paralysis of multi-year planning. Delivering value early allowed us to establish a continuous pipeline of delivery, proving that the best way to build institutional trust and momentum is to slice the problem thin and just start.
The recent mockery of First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth exposes a persistent, casual disrespect toward Welsh language and culture within the English-speaking world. This modern dismissal continues a historical pattern of cultural erasure that dates back to the systematic suppression of the language in schools. My own experience navigating the workforce under an accommodated name shows the compromise…
By replacing a failing legacy system with a working car tax service in just ten weeks, we proved that momentum and iterative delivery manage risk far more effectively than months of traditional planning. This approach turned massive legislative shifts into simple backlog items, demonstrating that 100 days is exactly enough time to prove the ‘art of the possible’ in any complex…
2025 has been a difficult year. It was a year that forced me to pause, reflect, and eventually reach a much better understanding of how my own brain works.
Stop funding fictional target architecture blueprints and start funding empowered, long-lived teams. The traditional, rigid approach is too slow for the age of AI and will never solve your real-world legacy tech problems. It’s time to trade the fiction for empowered teams and clear principles.
Every few months or so, somebody asks on social media why a particular DVLA digital service is turned off over night. Rather than answering it every time, I’ve decided to write this post, so I can point people at it in future. It’s a great case study to show why making government services digitally native can be quite complicated.
2024 has been a bit of a roller coaster. Work has been ridiculously busy and we started the first phase of renovating the house.
Short(ish) month notes for August. I’ve spent the last week not working, which has been much needed. I’ve been feeling a little burnt out after a busy summer, and by last Friday I was running on empty.
I think I’ve started every set of months notes saying I’ve been busy. But hoo boy was I not prepared for July! Thoughts on the general election, welsh politics, work, CrowdStrike, gin, house work and a final word on Twitter
Things got busy, and I predictably stopped writing. These are some brief catch-up notes for May & June dominated by work, my board, house renovation and Dilys
Following the CrowdStrike incident a few days earlier, I guest edited a special edition of the Public Digital Newsletter to bring together articles and views that explained what happened, how it might have been avoided and what might happen next.
I’ve published a post on the Public Digital blog with immediate reflections on the CrowdStrike outage which impacted millions of computers around the world.
I started writing this last week, and then got completely sidetracked. This has been one of those months where so much has happened, I probably should have written week notes instead. But you’re going to get this abbreviated (but still overly long) summary instead.
I’m sure I only wrote one of these a few days ago - but apparently we’re almost in April. Unintentionally, this one is very focussed on my health / NHS based work. March 2024: presenting reports, health annual plan, house work, duty of candour and cooking
Another month gone. It’s a cliche, but it really has just disappeared - I’m sure New Year was only a few weeks ago. But that means it’s time for another month note. February 2024: board, work, house renovation, turning the oil tanker, devolution and the resurgence of week notes
I’m not sure I can stretch myself to writing something every week, so I’m setting myself a slightly less onerous goal of a note every month instead. So - January 2024: work, health, things I’ve read and things I’m thinking about
There is so much that has been written and said about the Horizon scandal over
the past 10 years, that it’s hard to pick out what actually happened, and how it
got so bad. 
 When things go really badly wrong, there’s never just one cause. Many things
have to have failed. In the case of Horizon, this list is huge: the tech, the
supplier, the culture, the investigations, the…
It’s half way through January, so I’m a little late with my 2023 wrap up. But better late than never!
I’m a digital technology specialist with extensive experience in transforming
complex legacy IT, coaching technology teams as they build new digital services
and coaching executives on setting the conditions for success. 
 I advise governments, public institutions and commercial organisations on
building digital capability, setting vision/strategy and leading…
I have an old blog that I no longer update. 
 At some point I’ll migrate some of that content over here, but for now it’s
 over here
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I’ve recently been interviewed by Jillian Carruthers, Executive Director of the Environment Sustainability Division in the British Columbia Public Service for their #DigitalBC series of videos. 
 In this video , I talk in detail about how government approaches legacy modernisation projects. 
 A version of this interview was also published as a podcast . 

2020 is almost over. A year that will forever be remembered as that one lost to a global pandemic, people dying, many getting ill, and the March that never ended. But many other things happened as well, and this year note is an attempt at capturing some of those things for posterity.
James Stewart and I recently gave a talk at Velocity Conference in Berlin about how to use design principles to solve problems in technology projects
Working with technology, it’s rare that you get to build something totally new without having to think about systems or services that already exist.
This week I gave evidence to the Parliament Science and Technology Committee about digital government and the challenges ahead to continue delivering good services to users
Publishing blog posts about the work you’re doing is a great way of making things open. In the early days, GDS was great at this. Working out loud and talking openly about even small changes was normal practice. It was just a thing that happened. Fast forward to 2018 and things are different. Blogs that were once active, now lie dormant – untouched for months.
This year has been a bit of a mixed bag, with many ups and downs: Leaving GDS; setting up my own business; getting married; visiting new places; exploring London.
Spend controls often focus on immediate savings, but there are many other benefits of introducing controls on technology spending which often get ignored
When building and running services it’s important get into the habit of releasing updates to users on a regular basis. Always be shipping.
Organisations that create an environment and culture that supports delivery will find they build better services and have more productive teams. Don’t slow down delivery.
Progress and impact of the work we’re doing to improve the security of government digital services
An incident report about several issues that took government services offline
Changing the relationship between the citizen and the state. 

 Digital transformation is a phrase that gets thrown about a lot in government circles at the moment. 
 It means different things to different people. This makes it impossible for people to really understand what you mean when you say it. 
 I’m not the first to write something about this. Simon recently wrote about how…
A few weeks ago was my fifth anniversary at the Government Digital Service. 
 I’ve had the opportunity to work on a huge number of important projects in various roles including software developer, technical lead, product owner, delivery manager, troubleshooter and technical architect. 
 From building GOV.UK to travelling to DVLA in Swansea every week creating new digital services. From…
Work we’re doing to improve the security of government digital services
It’s been a fortnight of big announcements. 
 Mike has announced he’s leaving. Leisa is going home . Tom , Ben & Russell have decided to move on. We’ve also said goodbye to some others – Andy, Lindsey , Sam and Mark . 
 There’s been lots of noise about what this means for GDS, for ongoing digital transformation, for the future of IT in government. 
 If I said this hasn’t all been…
Last week I spent a day in Manchester with my team’s user researcher. She’s visiting people all over the country to help us better understand how people interact with government services. 
 Taking part in research like this gives you a great opportunity to meet people outside of your normal circle. As a civil servant, I spend most of my time with people who have an interest in and…
January is usually a fairly quiet month. It normally takes people a while to get back into things following the Christmas break. 
 This year however, everything seemed to have hit the ground running. Lots of projects have moved forward quickly and it looks like the first half of this year is going to be rather productive. 
 This month the first phase of DVLA’s Vehicle Management service…
When you’re deep in the day to day detail of projects, it’s quite easy to lose sight of the big picture. If you’re making lots of small, incremental changes, you can quickly forget what things were like when you started. 
 I’m currently taking a couple of weeks away from my DVLA projects, partly because it’s long overdue, but partly because I’ve done just that. 
 I’ve been feeling pretty…
Some of the recent tweaks we’ve made to the DVLA vehicle tax and SORN services
How DVLA is making vehicle information easier to understand for users
How DVLA/GDS are using A/B testing to push more people towards the beta vehicle tax service
View driving record – lots of my focus over the past few weeks has been assisting this team to get to their public beta. 
 It’s been a bit of a testing-fest with load, penetration and data quality testing going on. As the data from the driving records goes though a pretty complicated process to get to us, the DVLA testing team have been working hard to make sure we’re receiving and…
I started off the fortnight with 4 days in sunny Newcastle doing interviews for HMRC’s new digital centre . It’s always interesting sitting on the other side of an interview table, but these were somewhat unusual as we held them in hotel rooms. Luckily the hotel had replaced the beds with tables otherwise it could have been a bit awkward. 
 We finished off the Newcastle trip with a meet-up in…
Vehicle tax & SORN – the team spent last week tidying things up and running tests with DVLA staff. They then launched the public beta on Thursday last week. Early counts suggest that nearly 5,000 people have taxed/SORNd their cars over the first few days using the beta. The team are now looking at the feedback and data to see what improvements we can make. 
 View driving record – a good couple…