Just before the Bank Holiday weekend, the Department for Work & Pensions published a press release updating on the Universal Credits Programme’s ‘pathfinder’ (or pilot) schedule. The result, over the last few days, was numerous headlines in the national newspapers expressing concerns over difficulties that the Programme is facing. In summary, the department’s press release revealed that only one of four planned pilots would go ahead at the end of April (with the other four delayed until July). The national rollout remains scheduled for October. DWP states that this "progressive rollout"/"controlled approach" means that Job Centres will intensively test the new system as it is rolled out, ensuring claimants are protected throughout.
Many commentators are now questioning the likelihood of the national rollout going ahead on schedule. In our view the big problem appears to be the number of Programme ‘touch points’ where failure to comply with new requirements would result in the whole programme failing. And most of the potential problems are related to IT.
Starting in the centre, the DWP has four IT suppliers contracted to develop various parts of the Universal Credits system – Accenture, IBM, HP and BT. The system is being developed using ‘Agile’ methodologies, which are currently flavour of the month. As far as we are aware it is the biggest, most ambitious and most public programme to use ‘agile’ and we suspect there has been a steep learning curve for the department.
Then there is local government (see UK local government market trends & forecasts), where there are concerns about the DWP’s Automated Transfer to Local Authority Systems’ (ATLAS) project. Atlas is intended to increase the amount of information that can be sent automatically to local authorities in a data format that can be directly loaded into their systems. But come councils have reported difficulties in coping with the volume of information being produced.
Then there are the small employers that must comply with the new ‘Real Time Information’ (RTI) system. Small employers must be able to update the system in real time so that the Government can adjust benefits as and when the employees’ income goes up or down. Press articles over the weekend suggest that ‘000s are not ready. Apparently 4m small companies have now been given longer to comply.
And finally there are the claimants, who will be expected to use the internet to make their claims under the Government’s ‘digital by default’ agenda. There remains concern that many will need a huge amount of support; they will be given help to build online skills but local authorities are likely to also need to provide people with face to face help (probably more than anticipated).
Even if technical difficulties are overcome, the impact of bad press related to even just a handful of claimants experiencing delays to their benefits will be huge. Once again it will be the large SIs in the spotlight (even if the fault lies elsewhere). And that could be very damaging at a time when they are already facing an uphill struggle in terms of their reputation in central government.