Department of Urban Services, Australian Capital Territory
WebTest-Learner Licence
Description
Every year around 10 000 people in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) take one of the first steps in gaining their drivers licence when they sit a test to obtain their learners permit. Thanks to the development of the Learner Licence Knowledge WebTest by the ACT Department of Urban Services, this has now become a whole lot easier.
WebTest is a single online database that allows Canberrans to do the test for their learners permit at any computer connected to the internet. Previously they could do the test only at one of 60 standalone databases that were located across the territory, mainly in secondary schools.
Features
WebTest uses an online database of questions to securely and consistently deliver the learners permit test to any location via the internet. As it is based on a single database of questions, WebTest can bring together the practice test and the real test, which were previously two separate functions. Further, the single database allows questions and answers to be modified online in real time.
The practice test draws from the extensive bank of questions in the database to present questions randomly to unidentified users.
In the real test, identified users are presented with 35 questions, which are randomly selected across all categories. Answers within each question are also presented in random order. To achieve an overall pass, the person taking the test must answer a minimum number of questions correctly in several categories.
WebTest’s sophistication extends to being able to recognise when a user is trying to change their answer to a question by returning to a previous screen and submitting a different response. This is often a challenge with web-based applications, but the technology underlying WebTest means that a person cannot use such things as ‘back’ and ‘refresh’ keys to influence their results.
An added feature of WebTest is that test results are available immediately to the person doing the test, the test facility and ACT Government shopfronts. Statistics are compiled in real time and can be analysed remotely. There are inbuilt safeguards to limit access to personal information.
As WebTest draws from a single database of questions, the same infrastructure can serve as both a teaching and examination tool. So not only can people use it to obtain a learners permit, but they can also use it when preparing to get a learners permit—or even brush up on their knowledge of the road rules if they are already on the road!
Unlike the dispersed access databases, WebTest is highly scalable and fully engineered to ensure virtually 100 per cent availability. The hardware and software used for WebTest automatically reacts to peaks and troughs in use, drawing on the resources it needs at any one time in order to provide a responsive service. This means it can accommodate extreme peaks and troughs in use without requiring changes to the system.
Outcomes
Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of WebTest is the convenience it offers people in being able to do their learners permit test from any computer connected to the internet, rather than having to make a booking and travel to one of the 60 sites previously located across the territory.
But WebTest has a number of other positive outcomes for both users and the Department of Urban Services.
People no longer have to wait 24 hours once they pass the test before visiting a shopfront to obtain their learners permit. Because WebTest enables statistics to be compiled in real time, test results are available immediately to not only the person taking the test but also to the test facility and shopfronts. This has overcome the problem of people who have passed the test arriving at shopfronts to obtain a licence, only to find that their test results had not yet been forwarded by the test facility.
Consolidating test data previously required extensive manual intervention, with test facilitators, for example, having to email results to a central person to be reformatted and re-entered into another database before they could be accessed by staff at a shopfront.
WebTest collects a wealth of statistically significant data, such as the pass or fail rate for each question. This enables the department to analyse, cross-check and subsequently refine questions to differentiate between levels of knowledge. For example, questions showing a 100 per cent pass mark are reviewed because they are unlikely to be playing a role in determining a student’s level of knowledge. Similarly, the department scrutinises questions that have a below 50 per cent pass rate because the framing of the question, rather than the knowledge required to answer it, is most likely the cause of the fail rate. The data collected through WebTest also enables the department to understand other factors, such as the impact of English as a second language on the pass/fail rate.
While the 60 separate databases located across the territory were state of the art when originally implemented, updating and supporting them was becoming increasingly problematic and expensive for the department. For example, when the default suburban speed limit was revised to 50 kilometres an hour, each site had to be visited to manually make the changes. Further, there was significant downtime and support was sporadic, depending on where a database was located. As a single online database, WebTest overcomes these problems.
Future directions and lessons learnt
Using the statistics collected from people using WebTest, the department will continue to build and refine the question database in order to make it the most effective test tool it can. This refinement will include revising the wording of questions and improving the associated images.
With the increasing ubiquity if ICT and greater mobile connectivity, it will be worth revisiting the test delivery mechanism to see how such things as mobile phones could be leveraged to further improve the service.
WebTest shows the gains that can be made in both efficiency and effectiveness when disciplined business analysis is combined with state-of-the-art ICT hardware and software, best practice test administration and an overwhelming desire to improve customer service.
Interestingly, it is not only the ICT component of the WebTest project that provides value for money for taxpayers. In designing WebTest, the department extensively analysed processes, used stakeholder focus groups and documented the detailed business requirements in plain English. This approach reduced the cost of building WebTest by some 75 per cent, with the quote received before the analysis was undertaken being four times more than the quote received for building the application once the analysis was completed.
Project name: WebTest
Project URL: http://www.roadready.act.gov.au [
] or http://roadready.act.gov.au/test []
Date of project: November 2005
Agency: Intact (for Department of Urban Services)
Contact: Mr Simon Bolton
Contact for information on this page:Better Practice Team