DWP says radical welfare reform demands ICT investment

"We are proposing to change forever how the system works,” said Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith “Not tinkering around the edges but a fundamental change from the top to bottom. Making it easier to help people into work, fairer to those who pay for the welfare state and continuing to provide unconditional support to those who need it."

 

He noted: “Too often governments have tried to tackle poverty but ended up managing its symptoms. The changes outlined here are based on a recognition that poverty cannot be tackled through treating the symptoms alone. The benefits system has shaped the decisions of the poorest in a way that has trapped generation after generation in a spiral of dependency and poverty. This has cost the country billions of pounds every year in cash payments and billions more in meeting the social costs of this failure.”

 

According to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)'s 21st Century Welfare  paper new ICT systems will be required to support these ambitions.  The white paper said: “We are looking at how we could use smart automation to deliver support without the wasteful bureaucratic delays to payment that make the move into work more stressful than it needs to be. Similar technologies are already commonplace in the private sector and should make the benefits system quicker and more responsive for the customer and more efficient for the taxpayer whilst not increasing costs to business.”

 

But the DWP says this would not be a major new ICT infrastructure programme, but two smaller developments to existing infrastructure.  It said: "We envisage an integrated IT system to manage all claims, and a single payment system to apply a withdrawal rate and pay the correct entitlement. These would not be entirely new systems and could be built on our existing IT and capabilities.

 

“The IT changes that would be necessary to deliver a more integrated system would not constitute a major IT project, but two developments building on existing technologies: a system to manage contact with customers, gather evidence and assess a household’s entitlement to support could be built using existing technology in everyday use in both the public and private sector; a second system would be required to bring together a household’s total entitlement and information on their earnings. It would then use these pieces of information to apply the withdrawal rates and make the correct payment.”

 

The DWP added:  “This payment system could be built around the BACS system which is already used to pay benefits to 96% of Department for Work and Pensions customers. Payments for self-employed people and others not covered by the PAYE system would need to be delivered differently but would be part of the system.”

 

“If HM Revenue & Customs takes forward reforms to the Pay As You Earn system, real-time earnings data could offer significant opportunities to streamline the payment process and respond more quickly to fluctuations in income.”