Computing Staff

The concerns of the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee that officials at Jobcentre Plus are not acknowledging the extent of the problems caused by the Customer Management System (CMS2) are to be welcomed.

Computing broke the story about difficulties with CMS2 in August, and has since detailed not only the woeful performance of the Jobcentre Plus contact
centres and the knock-on effect on other services, but the human cost for people waiting as long as two months for money they need today.

These stories are neither isolated in one geographical area nor springing from a single tier of the benefits system. Computing has talked to staff at every link in the chain: from contact centre operatives and those conducting face-to-face follow-up interviews, to local authority employees and Citizens Advice Bureau
staff who try to pick up the pieces for people being let down by the system.

There is no doubt that there are serious and  widespread problems.

Computing has been saying for many years that there are no technology programmes, only business change programmes. CMS2 is no different.

For Jobcentre Plus to claim CMS2 as a ‘huge success’ – when vulnerable people are suffering hardship and distress – is not acceptable.

How far the problems are down to the technology being badly designed, or because staff have not been sufficiently trained, or because the underlying process of using centralised call centres is unworkable for delivering this particular service, is irrelevant.

Individual elements cannot be separated, and even if the software itself was flawless – which is certainly not the case, according to the first-hand experiences heard by Computing – it is still not a huge success if the process it underpins does not work.

Computing welcomes the Work and Pensions Committee request for more information about the CMS2 system.

Any inquiry is long overdue.