As DWP releases plan to ‘blaze a trail’ in its use of data, PAC recommends that it should expand and improve efforts to exchange information with the DfE and others
The Department for Work and Pensions has been warned by watchdog MPs that it “is not doing enough to share data with other government departments”.
The findings of a new report from parliament’s Public Accounts Committee comes shortly after the DWP itself published a data strategy for the coming years which sets an ambition for the department to “blaze a trail in… sharing and joining up data across government and with the wider social welfare system”.
One of the seven core conclusions of the PAC report – which examines the DWP’s efforts to tackle fraud and error in the administration of the UK’s benefits system – is that better cross-government data-sharing could “improve the accuracy” of payments. DWP errors led to £1bn of overpayments and £1.2bn of underpayments in the 2024/25 year, the committee found.
MPs added that “access to reliable data is key to keeping benefit payments accurate”, and pointed to some effective examples of current arrangements between the DWP and other organisations. But more needs to be done, the committee concluded – in particular to make use of data from the education system.
Related content
- What is the cost of DWP’s UC anti-fraud algorithm?
- DWP warned of legacy IT risk to anti-fraud efforts
- Free school meals: DSIT and DWP support work on data and digital means to identify eligibility
“However, the department’s benefit systems are not fully integrated and it lacks common data standards, which makes it difficult to take a data-driven approach to preventing and detecting fraud and error,” the report said. “The department uses real-time PAYE earnings data from HM Revenue and Customs to verify claimants’ employment earnings, which it holds up as a ‘gold standard’ example of data sharing. However, it does not seem to have similar data-sharing arrangements with other government departments, which could help it tackle key loss areas such as household composition. Data from the Department for Education, for example, could help the department to verify the number of children in households claiming Universal Credit.”
In light of this conclusion, MPs recommended that the DWP should respond and “set out… how it plans to work directly with other departments on data sharing, including how it can work with the Department for Education to help verify household composition as part of its checks for Universal Credit”.
Joining up
The department’s response could largely be drawn from the helpfully timed publication of a new DWP Data Strategy, covering the period from 2023 to 2030.
The plan’s introduction states that the benefits department “has a key part to play in supporting more joined-up services across government, [which] means improving how we share our data to help secure better outcomes for citizens and improving access to external sources of data”.
The document sets a target for making improvements for seven user groups – including other government departments, which should be able to “fluidly share data with DWP”, the strategy says.
The DWP data plan also puts forward seven “strategic priorities:
- build modern business applications with good quality, interoperable data;
- make data access and sharing with other government departments and third parties seamless and governed, ensuring DWP is seen as best-in-class;
- provide timely and efficiently rich insight datasets with good quality data accessible in self-service;
- deploy insight teams to cover all dimensions of business performance;
- embed data capabilities into business-owned multi-disciplinary product teams;
- deploy DWP-wide tools to boost collaboration, productivity, and enable effective data governance;
- embed a data culture, drive data literacy, and build data capability throughout DWP.”
In a jointly authored foreword to the strategy, DWP digital and transformation director Helen Wylie and chief data officeR Paul Francis say that “artificial Intelligence is only as good as the data it learns from; it’s all about the quality of data, managed, governed, secured and shared with the right teams in the right way”.
“This is why the DWP Data Strategy is vital, they add. “In the future, our data won’t sit in silos. Instead, we’ll manage it in line with the industry standard FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) principles which means our data will be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Our data will be fit for purpose and well managed, [and] every individual within every team across DWP will understand the power of data like never before.
The foreword concludes: “Together we’re on a challenging but exciting journey. It’s time to grasp this once-in-a generation opportunity to unlock the potential of data and improve the lives of our customers, colleagues and taxpayers.”
