Exclusive: Universal Credit programme is one of many DWP failures on the horizon, warns former employee

Ex-consultant says that projects have been plagued by Department for Work & Pensions lack of planning

The Universal Credit programme, which will waste at least £140m of the taxpayers' money, is one of many Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) projects that are heading for disaster, according to a former employee.

The ex-employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, was hired as a consultant at the government department, and saw first-hand some of the issues that led to the Public Accounts Committee slamming the DWP for "alarmingly weak management" and a "shocking absence of control".

In an exclusive interview with Computing, the former employee said that one project he worked on was the refresh of a significant chunk of infrastructure and software, for which the team handling the project did not determine any business requirements before going forward with their plans.

"Over three or four years, identical systems had grown up in parallel and the projects committee which looks after all of this said we don't want a fifth or sixth one, so let's consolidates this, which was the right thing to do," he said. "But the team immediately went out to the field, and said they'll use the four systems as a reference point to build a new one, with the inevitable result that the supplier is just going to reproduce what's already there."

Other issues with projects included not having a central document repository for information. In one such instance, the consultant asked a project manager where he could find all of the relevant information and waited for two weeks before the project manager responded with the relevant answers. In the manager's response, he said: "I'm sorry, I didn't realise it took this long to find the information", the consultant claimed.

He said that Microsoft SharePoint had been implemented but that it was something the department was not leveraging.

As DWP looked to improve project management within the department, it held a presentation for 100 of its team, which the consultant also attended.

"I went to the presentation where 100 of us were shipped in from all over the country for two days, and someone stood up and said ‘we've got this idea for managing projects'. The next thing they said was ‘you don't have to use it'. Why were we sitting there then? That must have cost £100,000," he said.

He went on to commend the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) for being more diligent in signing off funds, but suggested that DWP employees "know what to tell the PAC... so that at the second or third attempt, they get the money required".

But he dismissed any suggestion of the DWP having a genuine plan, stating that "all of the fancy mission statements mean absolutely squat".