Members Call For Improvements To New ROVER Portal

HVIA has suggested further improvements to the new ROVER portal following a request for feedback from members from the Federal Department of Infrastructure.

ROVER is the Department’s online portal for applications and approvals under the Road Vehicle Standards (RVS) legislation. See here for a summary of the major features of the rebuilt ROVER Portal.

Overall, feedback from members was that since the portal rebuild, most of the functions in ROVER related to Vehicle Type Approvals (VTAs) were running faster and the process for entering data was simpler.

However, for Component Type Approvals (CTAs) this was not true.

Key suggestions for improvements include reusing compliance data previously entered for similar but not identical vehicles, improvements to the search screens, and requirements to withdraw and resubmit applications to clear Requests For Information (RFIs).

While not system issues, complaints around inconsistent and confusing responses to RFIs by the department and the general slow responses remain a significant problem.

Other areas requiring improvement, according to member feedback, include:

• Lack of clarity on the information requirements for some ADRs;
• The standards exemption process has become more complicated;
• Poor management of data sheets for CTA including publishing outdated data sheets;
• Better management of RAV organisations IDs and RAV submitter IDs; and
• Improvements to Road Vehicle Descriptors.

If you have any other outstanding issues with ROVER that you would like to see addressed, please contact Greg Forbes at g.forbes@hvia.asn.au.