Benefits data lost in system transfer

Just one in three new benefits applications is being successfully transferred using the Jobcentre Plus (JC+) customer management system (CMS), according to evidence given to a Commons committee last week.

Work and Pensions Committee chairman Terry Rooney described the situation as ‘terrifying’.

Seven of the 22 CMS-enabled contact centres have reverted to paper in an attempt to cut benefits application backlogs, causing a number of claimants to wait up to two months for their money (Computing, 29 September).

The problems were the result of over-long call times caused by difficulties with the system, and from information input into CMS being lost when it was ‘pushed’ to legacy benefits processing systems (Computing, 31 August 2005).

‘Statistics made available to us tell us that only one in three cases is going through the computer system properly,’ Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, told the Work and Pensions Committee.

JC+ chief executive Lesley Strathie said the push of information to legacy systems was hampered by anti-fraud measures, which meant that minute inaccuracies such as a missing apostrophe stopped the transfer.

This push is currently successful in 70 per cent of Jobseekers’ Allowance claims and 59 per cent of Income Support claims, and an upgraded system is due in March, said Strathie.

‘We have to get the balance right between fraud protection and a customer-friendly and efficient system,’ she said.

Work and Pensions secretary Margaret Hodge said that the transformation programme, of which CMS is a part, had not gone smoothly, but that she remains confident of its success.

‘I am convinced that at the end of this process of reorganisation and change we will have a better service for our customer, with greater efficiency and value for money for the taxpayer,’ she told the committee.

More than 50,000 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) employees, including JC+ staff, held a two-day strike last week as part of a protest against job cuts. The DWP’s efficiency plan, which includes implementation of CMS at JC+, aims to cut some 40,000 jobs by 2007 or 2008.