The Department for Work and Pensions is enhancing its IT
systems and cleansing its data to reduce the £1.6bn lost last year
due to errors by officials.
A report on the DWP’s finances by the National Audit Office
concluded that £2.7bn was lost in fraud and error over the last
financial year. Errors made by officials in income support,
jobseekers allowance, state pension credit and disability living
allowance payments accounted for 60% of the loss.
“Official error arises when the department incorrectly processes
a new claim to benefit or takes incorrect action when processing a
change of circumstance notified by a customer,” the report
said.
“As this is an area widely acknowledged as being wholly under
departmental control, an official error task force has been
established to support a demonstrable and measurable reduction in
benefit complexity and, by implication, official error rates.”
The department was aiming to cut processing error through “data
cleansing, enhanced IT solutions, and raising the profile of
accountability within benefit processing agencies”, the NAO report
said.
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