MPs on the Department for Work and Pensions subcommittee
launched their inquiry in November 2003 after continuing complaints
from MPs and the public about an IT-based reform of the Child
Support Agency (CSA).
The MPs also wanted information on an IT-based modernisation of the
agency's parent organisation, the Department for Work and Pensions,
but CS2, the agency's new IT system, is the focus of a large part
of the report.
The aim of CS2, supplied by US-based services giant EDS, was to
support simplified rules for calculating the payments made or
received by divorced parents for the children.
The old system, also supplied by EDS, did little more than
calculate payments. Information between the agency and the parents
was exchanged mainly by letter. The new system required a major
culture change: it allowed staff to answer queries and deal with
claims by phone.
Software for the new system ran to 60 million lines of computer
code, the committee was told. The project is a private finance
initiative worth about £456m. In January 2003, Parliament was told
that the department had agreed an increase of 7% in the value of
the original contract, in part because the system had proved more
complex to develop than originally thought. After awarding the
contract the department gave EDS about 2,500 requests for changes
to the system design.
When the system went live in March 2003, it was two years late and
caused difficulties for staff: some screens went blank and cases
could not be progressed.
Hundreds of thousands of parents are still waiting for their cases
to be moved from the old to the new, simplified system. Many of
them are paying more than they need to because their cases cannot
be transferred.
The reasons for the problems are a complex combination of IT and
cultural change issues at the agency. "The system is processing new
claims so slowly that the backlog of [new] work is increasing by
some 30,000 cases a quarter," said the committee. "The slow pace of
making first payments is very worrying."
The department has been withholding about £1m a month from EDS,
which is about 15%-20% of each monthly payment due. The supplier
and the department said the systems are now more reliable than when
first introduced, but the government has published little specific
information on the results of internal assessments of the £456m CS2
system.
The committee found it "unacceptable that full details about the
recovery plan for the system are not available to us".
The committee's report also said it is unclear over the extent to
which the problems have been caused by the hardware, software,
inadequate data or managerial and organisational weaknesses within
the CSA or EDS. The report suggested that if problems could not be
resolved, consideration should be given to abandoning the CS2
system.
"In our view abandonment of the CS2 system is preferable to
stubbornly continuing with the present situation only to abandon it
later when the recovery plan falters," said the committee.
"We recommend that if the new system is not fully operational for
new cases by 1 December 2004, the CSA should, by 1 February 2005,
make public its contingency plan including various options, in
particular the abandonment of the CS2 system in the event that this
should become necessary."
Key points:
- The DWP gave EDS 2,5000 requests for system changes
- The DWP has withheld £1m a month from EDS - 15%-20% for each
monthly payment due
- The backlog of (new) work is increasing by 30,000 cases a
quarter
Shaking up government IT >>