The delay appears to be an admission by the Government that they do not have the training, computer programmes and experience in place to avoid embarrassing mistakes which could lead to people not receiving the benefits to which they are entitled. In its announcement of the delay the Department of Work and Pension made no attempt to explain why it was unable to proceed as planned.
Absolutely
not so, as a government spokesperson quickly made clear :-
"Now look here, when will you naysayers and disbelievers stop "reading between the lines" like this ... UC is on track, it will remain on track, we are simply slowing down a bit, giving ourselves time to assimilate important new information, like that the f-ing IT doesn't in a lot of cases exist yet, and where it does exist the f-ing software stuck on it doesn't f-ing work and .... er sorry about that, ignore the last few comments please, it is a really tiring and stressful job being a spokesperson for the DWP what I meant to say was, and on this you can quote me, this decision has only been taken because ..."
"it was 'sensible' to start with one area* before rolling it out to the other three in July. It will allow us to make any changes that we feel we need to make and see what works and what doesn’t.”
*that
area being "
a single job centre in Ashton-under-Lyne".
11 comments:
Can we have a job guarantee yet? Remember there don't need to be any checks for fraud because you can't be in two places at the same time, and it wouldn't be economical to commute to a depot outside the catchment area where you live.
I do sympathise with the project team as far as the IT project is concerned. Nobody (and I do mean nobody) could deliver a £1 billion IT project without some delays.
The real issue here is that the UC does not actually require the new IT system. The civil servants who told Iain Duncan Smith that it did, were just trying to get the new IT they had been wanting, off the back of his universal credit.
Actually UC works pretty much like income support (a benefit that used to be the main out of work benefit and still exists for some claimants). So the UC should have been able to be delivered off a tweaked version of the income support processes.
IDS has just been a lot too trusting of his Sir Humphreys.
AC - I think, seeing as today I am inclined to be charitable and offer BOTD, it might just be a case of 50/50 "UC actually requiring hardware and software changes/the civil servants were just trying to get the new IT they had been wanting, off the back of his universal credit". After all, DWP Ministers are on record as promising they have "manually operated procedures being developed to cover the possible IT not there/not working" scenario.
The "HMRC computers feed DWP computers who then feed back to the HMRC computers 'real time data, live working, continually updated' aspects" of UC are quite clearly very problematic, as is the new "PAYE" data submission, format and timing, requirements HMRC are having to impose on employers.
However, the DWP from IDS downwards has been continually assuring Parliament and the media - main stream and specialist IT - that everything is completely hunky dory with UC for month after month, when it is pretty obvious, cf "changes in personnel at the top of the project, including v. senior people who felt it wise to just walk away from it to go work somewhere less pressured, and similarly v. senior people who were told to go, and so on, that it obviously isn't.
IDS has insisted on "ownership" of the project throughout, declined a change of Cabinet post because of "wanting to see it through" and, I suggest, must be expected to carry the can if it does fail, at either the lower 'far too many people - in work and out of - not being dealt with correctly when the system is implemented' or higher 'complete disaster, never got off the ground" worse case. Because of the implications for 'real people' no one with any sense actually wants UC to fail.
RA - the UC systems and procedures are supposed to be resilient enough to prevent "multiple sign ons in the same name, using same NI Number" if that is what you are referring to and, one would hope, also will include "integrity checks" like flagging up that a bank account designated as the receptacle for one person's UC payments is already being used for other UC claimants payments, and the cross checks against HMRC supplied and held data will presumably also help weed out some "fraudulent claims".
A Citizen's Income (of which UC is a crude approximation) requires no computerisation whatsoever.
You just pay people their dole money and give them a PAYE code with no personal allowance (i.e. a "BR" code) and if you want to withdraw their benefits at a higher rate like 50%, you just give them a PAYE code with a K code.
Job done. This is all part of normal PAYE procedures, we don't need to invent anything new.
And if these people do not know how the PAYE system works or what a K code is then shame on them.
Here's my summary.
MW, yes, both you and I suggested that in our submissions to the DWP.
Strangely, they opted not to go for it and sack several thousand superfluous civil servants. Funny , that.
MW & AC - First up (as I have been reminded - apologies MW) we are all "on holiday" so best keep this short. IDS obviously arrived at the DWP with "a pat solution" which we are told was the end product of several years work by his own think tank, the CSJ, to which he himself had devoted lots of time and energy in order to identify and understand the flaws in the benefits/welfare system as it was; and what needed to be done to put it right. He invited comments on his ideas, but appears not to have been very receptive to suggestions that he was headed down the wrong route, and that there were far simpler ways of achieving a better end result and I would suggest is equally unreceptive to the idea of "rip it up and start again" now - having literally and metaphorically "invested too much".
Having been called on myself by others who have approached me saying, in effect, "you know all about this PAYE/Tax Codings shite, is my pay slip right" and duly sat down with them and with the aid of tax tables, paper, pencil and calculator, shown them (most often) that it is, I would say a lack of understanding, however shameful, is pretty widespread, to the point of Ministers being appointed and on a mission to "change" ['make better!] the system, without actually really understanding what it is they are proposing to change. But once they get set on their desired outcome ... And they all believe that it is impossible to do anything without having it run by a computer system, and additionally if you are going to have a computer system, well then, have as many bells and whistles on it as possible because "it won't put the cost up much, and the savings we will make once the computer is doing it all" ... including from dispensing with AC's superfluous civil servants. ON the evidence of progress towards UC roll out so far, and all the talk of "manual back up" to deal with any IT shortcomings, the DWP may have got rid of some superfluous staff a little too quickly.
I too shall now go into "on holiday mode" and shall look forward to seeing where things are, on Tuesday ..
AC, you and me both, and I'm sure dozens of others.
Bob, one of the many other advantages of the AC/MW welfare system is that it doesn't require this "real time information" nonsense. The employer deducts normal tax and NIC without personal allowance (or deducts flat 50% if so wish) and the timing of those payments simply does not matter.
If our claimant only works occasionally long hours, or a few hours each week, or never, makes no difference.
Then the only "welfare fraud" to be perpetrated would be fake ID's (surprisingly seldom) and people being paid gross. But that is not really an issue - as long as the amount the employer claims as employment costs is the same as what he puts through the payroll, then job done.
"Job done. This is all part of normal PAYE procedures, we don't need to invent anything new."
That's the problem. Everybody wants to be the person who came up with the New System That Works, not the person who pointed out that the old system would work perfectly well if tweaked a little. If X comes up with a NSTW, it will hereinafter be referred to as X's system. If X simply tweaks the existing system, it will continue to be called Y's system and X's tweaking will soon be forgotten about.
AC,
"I do sympathise with the project team as far as the IT project is concerned. Nobody (and I do mean nobody) could deliver a £1 billion IT project without some delays."
Delays have nothing to do with cost. You also have to consider the scale of the project, complexity and so forth.
I've worked on projects that got delivered on time with multi-million pound budgets, and we got an above-normal budget because of the criticality of the project, which meant we could go to market and hire DBAs and build managers at above market rates, which meant we didn't have to wait around for long to get one.
The problem of government projects are numerous, and oft repeated, which is why they get measured in huge numbers of digits, while most private sector projects are talked about in millions (and only a few of those).
They have complex tendering processes, limiting them to a tiny number of providers. These companies give you a team that is typically made up of a slimey, shark who is the "Account Executive" (salesman). Working for him are a couple of project managers, who are more concerned with extracting money or looking good than understanding what is being built. And they then bring in their own staff to the project, regardless of experience in a particular field (so are little better than amateurs) and backfill with contractors.
Then government overcomplicates requirements, and then change it based on political whim, resulting in lots of extra billable hours.
And it's all paid at laughably high rates around £1000+/day, when the consultancy is adding little of value. That's double what I bill for 1 day of work, hire me for longer and it goes down massively in price.
I've worked both with, and for those consultancies and would never bring any of them in, ever. There are medium-sized consultancies out there that are cheaper and better at doing the job. I think government got a better deal when it had internal IT departments.
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