Ghana - A2 Vehicle Registration (Owner, Manual Registration)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields/documents and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-14

This is GovSchema Standard Research cycle GOV-2955 (child of GOV-2952, which independently fetched and read this source and pre-verified the candidate this cycle). Ghana already exists in the registry at 5 of 6 verticals (National ID & Civic Documents — GOV-2510, Taxes — GOV-2697, Visa — GOV-2698, Business Formation — GOV-2704, Passport — GOV-2703). This document closes Ghana's DMV vertical — Ghana now stands at 6 of 6, its first jurisdiction outside the original launch set to reach full coverage via this vertical's own dedicated cycle (following Colombia, Bulgaria, Romania at 6/6 previously).

Why this candidate, and a correction to this registry's own prior finding

CATALOG.md already carries a prior entry (GOV-2716, dated 2026-07-13, one day before this cycle) recording Ghana's DMV vertical as "a confirmed dead end" — it found dvla.gov.gh rebuilt on a modern stack (a Next.js marketing site plus a Nuxt.js "online services" SPA at service.dvla.gov.gh), with the online system fully login-gated and no downloadable paper Form F/F1 specimen found anywhere, including in the Wayback Machine's archive of the agency's historical forms/publications paths.

That finding is not contradicted here — service.dvla.gov.gh (the transactional, account-linked online-services SPA) may well still be login-gated, and this cycle did not re-test it. What GOV-2716 did not check is www.dvla.gov.gh/services — the main marketing site's own public Services page, a distinct route on the primary dvla.gov.gh domain (not the service. subdomain), which independently re-fetched this cycle with no login/CAPTCHA at any point. Both facts can be true at once: DVLA's transactional backend requires an account, while its public marketing site publishes a field-by-field Requirements/Procedures walkthrough of every DMV service openly. This is disclosed as a correction/refinement of the prior cycle's scope, not a reversal of its specific claim about service.dvla.gov.gh or about the absence of a downloadable Form F/F1 (which remains true — no PDF specimen was found or claimed here either; the source used is the HTML services page itself, not a PDF).

Sources examined

Source 1 (primary source, the Services page)

• URL: https://www.dvla.gov.gh/services
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-14, independently re-fetched this cycle with curl from scratch (not trusted from the GOV-2952 issue's own cited figures without independent re-derivation).
• HTTP status: 200. Content-Type: text/html. Size: 179,310 bytes (sha256: d3352ee18a71b4f4956ae9968064b4cbbbe5f9dc147565fa00bee51475cd1e37, independently computed this cycle with sha256sum).
• Rendering: a Next.js App Router page. The server-sent HTML response already embeds the full page text (confirmed by stripping every HTML tag with a regex and finding the complete "A2 Vehicle Registration" Requirements/Procedures prose present verbatim in the raw response body, with no client-side-only rendering gate encountered) — a plain curl fetch was sufficient, no headless-browser rendering was needed for this cycle (unlike some other jurisdictions' JS-heavy portals in this registry).
• What it confirms: the full "Vehicle Registration" service catalogue — A1 (Roadworthiness Certification) through A13 (Trade Plate), and "Driver Licensing" B1 (Learner's Licence) through at least B5 (Foreign Licence Conversion) — each with its own Requirements/Procedures/Note sections. This schema models only A2 Vehicle Registration, whose text reads (verbatim, re-derived independently this cycle, not copied from the issue): This byte-level re-derivation matches the GOV-2952 issue's own citation of this text exactly, an independent confirmation of the candidate (not a trust-on-face-value repetition of the issue's own claims).
  • Requirements — OWNER: (1) the vehicle; (2) original customs entry documents; (3) vehicle inspection report from a designated PVTS; (4) two recent passport pictures of both old and new owners; (5) valid Ghana Card.
  • Requirements — AUTHORIZED AGENT (explicitly "in addition to the above requirements documents"): Power of Attorney from the owner (authorization letter); valid Ghana Card of the authorized agent; two passport-size pictures of the authorised agent. Not modelled in v1.0.0 — see "Scope" below.
  • Requirements — PERSONALISED NUMBER (explicitly "in addition to the above, submit an application letter stating"): proposed personalized number not exceeding 6 characters; vehicle chassis number; current registration number; vehicle registration certificate; valid Ghana Card. Modelled as an optional, additive branch (see "Scope" below).
  • Procedures (5 steps): present the vehicle with the customs entry at a PVTS for testing and to obtain the inspection report; present the vehicle with customs documents to DVLA officials for authentication and release; present all documents to DVLA officials for inspection, verification of ownership, and processing; present any other documents DVLA may require; obtain an invoice and pay the prescribed fees based on cubic capacity/tonnage.
  • MANUAL REGISTRATION (3 steps): complete Form A, VRC, and all required forms, affix photograph, and sign; return completed forms to DVLA for processing; obtain registration number, plate(s), endorsed registration documents, VRC, and roadworthy sticker.
  • ONLINE REGISTRATION (2 steps): capture biometric details; obtain certificate of title, vehicle registration smart card, plate(s), VRC, and roadworthy sticker.

Source 2 (context, DVLA's legal basis)

• URL: https://www.dvla.gov.gh/about
• Fetched this cycle: HTTP 200, text/html, 50,057 bytes (sha256: 18df5ab58936f53eaa8486dad07866a0e6299540a41d880f8a296e5b2900b96f).
• Confirms DVLA's own stated legal basis, quoted verbatim: "The Authority is established by an Act of Parliament, (The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority Act, 1999 (Act 569), (the 'DVLA Act'), with the object of promoting good driving standards in the country and ensuring the use of roadworthy vehicles on roads and other public places... The DVLA's functions have been further boosted by the passage of the Road Traffic Act, 2004 (Act 683)." authority.operatedBy is left unset in schema.json since DVLA is itself the statutory authority (not "operated by" a separately-named parent body with its own independently-confirmable URL for this schema to cite) — the Act 569/Act 683 basis is disclosed here in prose instead of forced into the operatedBy shape, following this registry's practice of omitting the member rather than asserting an unconfirmed reporting-line citation (cf. mk/mvr/baranje-za-izdavanje-na-vozacka-dozvola's identical omission for the same reason).

Scope for v1.0.0

The A2 service defines three requirement sets that are explicitly additive, not alternate registration types selected by a single choice: OWNER is the base case; AUTHORIZED AGENT and PERSONALISED NUMBER are each introduced with "in addition to the above" language. This v1.0.0:

• Models the OWNER requirement set via the MANUAL registration pathway (the title's own scope), the cleanest, most DMV-vertical-canonical first-time-registration flow in this registry (registration/title, not licensing — matching e.g. rw/rra's and ro/dgpci's own DMV-vertical scoping).
• Also models the PERSONALISED NUMBER add-on, gated by a requestsPersonalisedNumber boolean, since the source itself frames it as strictly additive to OWNER (not a different filer identity) and it contributes the only genuinely itemized data points (as opposed to document requirements) anywhere in the A2 service text: the proposed number itself, the vehicle's chassis number, and its current (foreign) registration number.
• Does NOT model the AUTHORIZED AGENT requirement set — a distinct filer-identity scenario (a different person, with their own Power of Attorney/Ghana Card/photos, filing on the owner's behalf) that would need its own applicant-identity fields and gating logic to model honestly. Disclosed as an out-of-scope companion for a future version, not silently folded into the OWNER case.
• Does NOT model the ONLINE registration pathway (biometric capture, certificate-of-title/smart-card issuance) — a materially different procedure from the Manual pathway modelled here. Disclosed as an out-of-scope companion for a future version.

Field/document design — a Requirements/Procedures walkthrough is not a form

Unlike most of this registry's sources, dvla.gov.gh/services is a prose service-page walkthrough, not a downloadable form with printed field labels or an AcroForm layer — DVLA publishes no standalone "Form A" specimen (per Manual-Registration step 1, it is completed in person). This registry already accepts this source type as an alternate to a fillable PDF (cf. si/furs/doh-odm-income-tax-return-instructions, whose FURS return is likewise modelled from an instruction booklet's own numbered walkthrough rather than a blank form template).

Every fields[]/documents[] entry was derived by classifying each Requirements-list item as either applicant-entered data (a field) or a physical/attachment requirement (a documents[] entry), and by reading the Procedures/Manual-Registration steps for the data points they imply:

• currentOwnerFullName / currentOwnerGhanaCardNumber / previousOwnerFullName are baseline-identity inferences, not fields transcribed from a printed label — the OWNER Requirements list itself only names "the vehicle" and a set of documents to present, no standalone name/number blank. These are modelled because Requirement 4 ("two recent passport pictures of both old and new owners") and Procedure 3 ("verification of ownership") make an owner identity plainly necessary to the process, the same disclosed-inference precedent used for si/furs/doh-odm-income-tax-return-instructions's fullName/ taxNumber/residentialAddress fields (modelled from a general identity-block description rather than an itemized label list).
• The "old and new owners" judgment call. Requirement 4's "both old and new owners" is read as the vehicle's previous (pre-import, foreign) registered owner and the new (Ghana-registering) applicant — consistent with A2 covering first-time registration of "an imported or manufactured vehicle," where an imported vehicle very plausibly already has a foreign registration history. This is a disclosed interpretive judgment call, not a literal statement anywhere on the source; an alternate reading (e.g. two co-applicants both named "owner" for some other reason) cannot be ruled out from this source alone.
• vehicleChassisNumber/vehicleCurrentRegistrationNumber are modelled only under the PERSONALISED NUMBER branch (requiredWhen requestsPersonalisedNumber: true) because that is the only place the source text itself names them. Form A's own field layout very plausibly also collects a chassis number for every A2 registration (not only personalised-number requests) — but since Form A has no independently available specimen, that generic vehicle-identification content is disclosed as an out-of-scope gap, not invented as an ungated field.
• documents[] covers the five physical/attachment items the OWNER Requirements list itemizes (customs entry documents, PVTS inspection report, both owners' passport photographs — split into currentOwnerPassportPhotos/previousOwnerPassportPhotos since the source's "both" phrasing names two distinct people, and the Ghana Card), plus the personalised-number application letter itself (distinct from the three data points it states, which are separately modelled as machine-checkable fields[]).
• VRC (Vehicle Registration Certificate). The Manual-Registration procedure names VRC twice: once as something completed alongside Form A (step 1, "Complete Form A, VRC and all required forms") and once as an output DVLA issues at the end (step 3). Given this dual appearance and no independently available VRC specimen, it is not modelled as either a documents[] entry or a field — disclosed as an out-of-scope gap rather than guessed either way.
• Registration outputs (registration number, plate(s), endorsed registration documents, roadworthy sticker) are DVLA-issued outputs of the Manual-Registration procedure's final step, not applicant-entered data — excluded, consistent with this registry's general convention for staff/office-issued artifacts (cf. rw/rra's "FOR RRA USE ONLY" Section E exclusion, mk/mvr's Part 4 receiving-official fields).
• steps[] mirrors the source's own Procedures (5 items) and Manual Registration (3 items) sequences directly, collapsed into one linear 6-step flow (the two lists are sequential in the source's own prose, not alternatives) with fields attached at the step each is first collected or made relevant.

Field inventory

• Fields: 8 (fields[]) — 4 always-applicable (currentOwnerFullName, currentOwnerGhanaCardNumber, previousOwnerFullName, customsEntryReferenceNumber), 1 gate (requestsPersonalisedNumber), and 3 gated on that boolean (proposedPersonalisedNumber, vehicleChassisNumber, vehicleCurrentRegistrationNumber).
• Documents: 6 (documents[]) — 5 always-required, 1 gated on requestsPersonalisedNumber.
• Steps: 6 (steps[]), a linear flow (Procedures 1-5 folded together with Manual Registration 1-3, minus the shared final "obtain fee invoice"/"return forms" overlap collapsed into single steps).
• No exclusivityGroups/crossFieldValidation: no independent-boolean mutually-exclusive choice or cross-field date/amount comparison exists anywhere in this v1.0.0's scope.

Conformance testing

Seven fixtures under conformance/gh/dvla/a2-vehicle-registration/1.0.0/ were checked against this schema's required/requiredWhen/validation rules with a throwaway local evaluator (not committed — ad hoc, per this registry's established mock-conformance-testing practice, implementing the Condition grammar directly from spec/v0.3/SPEC.md §8.1):

| Fixture | Scenario | Expected | Actual | |---|---|---|---| | valid-no-personalised-number.json | OWNER, Manual, no personalised-number request | 0 errors | 0 errors | | valid-with-personalised-number.json | OWNER, Manual, WITH personalised-number request (all 3 gated fields + gated document supplied) | 0 errors | 0 errors | | mutation-control-missing-owner-name.json | Omits required currentOwnerFullName | 1 error (MISSING_REQUIRED) | 1 error | | mutation-control-missing-requests-personalised-number.json | Omits required requestsPersonalisedNumber | 1 error (MISSING_REQUIRED) | 1 error | | mutation-control-missing-conditional-proposed-number.json | requestsPersonalisedNumber: true but proposedPersonalisedNumber omitted | 1 error (MISSING_REQUIRED, requiredWhen-gated) | 1 error | | mutation-control-personalised-number-too-long.json | proposedPersonalisedNumber set to a 10-character value against validation.maxLength: 6 | 1 error (MAXLENGTH_VIOLATION) | 1 error | | mutation-control-missing-required-document.json | Omits the always-required pvtsInspectionReport from documents[] | 1 error (MISSING_REQUIRED_DOCUMENT) | 1 error |

All 7 fixtures behaved exactly as expected. This document is authored at structural-reference maturity: the source's own Requirements/Procedures structure is transcribed and machine-checkable where the source itself provides enough content to do so, but no live DVLA submission was attempted, and Form A's/VRC's own internal field layouts remain unavailable and out of scope.

Meta-schema validation

``` $ node tools/validate.mjs registry/gh/dvla/a2-vehicle-registration/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/gh/dvla/a2-vehicle-registration/1.0.0/schema.json

1/1 document(s) passed.

$ node tools/validate-ajv.mjs registry/gh/dvla/a2-vehicle-registration/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/gh/dvla/a2-vehicle-registration/1.0.0/schema.json [v0.3]

1/1 document(s) validated against the meta-schema (ajv 2020-12). ```

tools/govschema-client's registry-index.json was regenerated (npm run build-index, after npm ci --include=dev to ensure ajv is actually installed — this registry's own documented gotcha about a local NODE_ENV=production making a bare npm ci skip dev dependencies) and now includes this document.

What was NOT fully resolved (disclosed, not silently guessed)

• Form A's and the VRC's own internal field layouts — no independently downloadable specimen of either exists; only the Requirements/Procedures walkthrough is available.
• The AUTHORIZED AGENT requirement set and the ONLINE registration pathway — both real, named branches of the A2 service, deliberately out of scope for this v1.0.0 (see "Scope" above).
• The exact semantic identity of the "old owner" in Requirement 4 — read as the vehicle's pre-import foreign owner, a disclosed interpretive judgment call rather than a literal statement on the source.
• Every other Vehicle Registration (A1, A3-A13) and Driver Licensing (B1-B5+) service on the same page remains unscreened backlog, left for a future cycle if a further DMV-vertical companion is ever wanted (Ghana's DMV vertical is already closed by this schema; these are optional companions, not gaps).