"just think of a contact centre, but it has got no people in it and think of an operating model that has got no back office"
Ah, like HMRC then.
New dole system is 'digital by default', like it or not
Universal credit – the government's "new and improved" benefits system – will be the first major government service to be digital by default. This is according to Steve Dover, director of major programmes at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Dover says: "There will be a back office to deal with the more vulnerable in …
-
Monday 6th February 2012 09:51 GMT ACx
So, claimants will need internet access. Does this "universal credit" pay for that? What happens is a kiddie in the house hold gets busted under these new anti piracy laws and the connection gets cut off?
The gov need to be careful here. If their services can only be reasonably accessed by the web, then sooner or later there will be called to hand out free connection that cant be cut off.
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 13:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
bigotted twit
Article's example was, some "kiddie" in the household, i.e. one of the other inhabitants. So, if your son or daughter or house sharer or simply visitor does something without your knowledge or consent, you are a "crim" are you?
These people are on the edge all ready. Presumably you will not be happy until bare-foot beggars are a normal part of British street scenes and, as in the USA, a simple stroke of fate such as serious illness or accident or unemployment for more than a fortnight can see you selling your house and falling into poverty, with your children. Oh, and I take it you will pay for the internet access and computer, with a support contract is its guaranteed availability is no longer a luxury.
No doubt you grew up with the benefit of free education, health, child benefit and the safety net in case you or your parents fell ill, lost their jobs. But, being the good soul you are, let's remove all that as only criminals and scroungers get benefits.. No doubt we should bring back the Victorian Poor Law. The Beadle in Oliver Twist is your hero.
Ugh.
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 09:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
WooHoo and thank you
The improvement in the services from the DWP is to be commended.
The first great innovation was paying benefit into a bank account, especially child benefit where the status checks are so low. No need to ever present yourself at a post office.
They also got rid of most of their Fraud Officers a few years ago.
Now claiming by the Internet, this is just the icing on the cake.
Praise Be
John Smith
Lagos.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 10:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
They had to bring in outside help????????
They have an army of people in the Corporate IT directorate, not one of them had the skills for this?
There's more people managing the the outsourcers now in CIT than when they did it in-house under ITSA.
"Agile? Wasssat?" There's too many dead-wood paper-pushers in CIT that are bloody useless and shouldn't be allowed near a filing cabinet and certainly not an IT project!
I see Joe Harley's really has done so well in his tenure, getting CIT where it needs to be to deliver a world class service. Crock of shite!
And now his remit is bigger than before
we're dooooooooomed
-
Monday 6th February 2012 10:10 GMT Jemma
Sigh
I am wondering if the chinless wonders who've come up with this have the remotest clue?
Many people on benefits can barely manage to pay food and heating, im sure they're bouncing for joy about this.
Not to mention those who dont have a computer will be down the libraries to 'use' it there. You know, the places that think patches are something you wear at the elbow... And that netscape is the latest in technology
The really fun part? Taxpayers will be paying twice - once to set it up, and once to pay for the damage.
...For everything else, theres COMMON SENSE.
-
-
-
Tuesday 7th February 2012 00:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What libraries?
The demise of libraries is a symptom and not the cause.
The real culprit is the like of facebook and twitter where kids get their culture via 'memes' and in 140 character slices.
If it were up to me I would insist that all posts to social media were treated the same as they would in a spell checker and posted with all miss-spellings underlined in red.
You could even add a dunce cap icon if you were feeling particularly mischievous.
-
-
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 10:26 GMT Alastair Dodd 1
Agile? Thanks god
at least it may actually be some good and deliver what is needed unlike all Waterfall/Prince2 crap they have been screwing up merrily for the past two decades.
In response to those who obviously haven't been in a dole office in the past 5 years, they all have several internet kiosks and under this will have more for those without their own access. Those with won't have to waste their time trekking into the office to have a piece of paper signed. In short I think this is a GREAT idea.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 10:47 GMT Ian Chard
'professional facilitation of agile elaboration workshops'
I'm willing to bet that no-one, not even the author of that document, knows what that phrase means.
Presumably they just hire people who say 'yeah baby, I'll facilitate the crap out of those agile elaboration workshops, and professionally too'.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 13:30 GMT Kubla Cant
To judge from my experience "elaboration" is a boring phase that comes between specification and development (I expect these two had special polysyllabic names, too, but I couldn't stay awake long enough to find out).
The idea was to turn a statement of requirements into something that could be built and, more important, tested. Quite a few requirements would be thrown out because they were non-testable and therefore vaporous.
"Facilitation" of course is the same as making something easier, except that it costs a lot more.
-
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 14:23 GMT Steve the Cynic
That'll be...
... because both you and your colleagues are unaware that the correct English translation for French "elaborer" is not "to elaborate". The technical term in linguistics is "false friend" and they abound between closely related languages like French and English. Here's a selection of other apparently similar French words that do not have the same meaning in English:
"demander" == "to ask" (e.g. a question) and not the stronger "to demand"
"actuel" == "current" and not "actual"
"deception" == "disappointment" and not ""deception"
"terminer" == "to finish" and not the full sense of English "to terminate"
"commander" == "to order" (as in a restaurant) and not "to command" in its sense of "give orders" (pun, yes, deliberate, yes)
"dégradé" can have a sense that has nothing whatever to do with "degraded".
-
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 10:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Would this new online service also include google analytics, tracking scripts and other nastiness as most government websites seem to do these days?
With the met office now showing adverts on their website it's not impossible to imagine the DWP doing the same sort of thing here. Imagine adverts for Ocean finance or Wonga.com appearing next to the form to claim benefits.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 10:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
One other thing: the HMRC portal for e-filing has shown itself to be quite flaky on occasion. On a number of occasions now it has returned HTML despite the standard that HMRC themselves had come up with saying that it should return XML.
What reason does anybody have to think that this won't be just as flaky and won't have problems withstanding the demand placed upon it?
-
Tuesday 7th February 2012 09:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Again with the downvoting.
And for those of you that think the government is capable of learning it's lessons just look at this article from 2005 and their reaction to EDS's apparent failure to provide adequate systems. The subsequent course of action? The DWP hires EDS for more work of course...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/05/hmrc_credit_portal/
IT experience within government is sorely lacking. The goverment often seem to rely on the private sector and they seem to like nothing more than being given the opportunity to screw the tax payer.
Incidentally going back to the HMRC it seems that portal had been subcontracted out to a thrid party, and it would be likely for the same to happen with the DWP systems too. HMRC are very hesitant it seems to get problems fixed, and I'm guessing that this is because the subcontractor that built the service charges more for such fixes (yet more incentive to provide a bad service - http://dilbert.comhttp://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-12-06/).
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 12:44 GMT riparian zone
there are those that won't, those that can't and those that can't and won't
After training in the community for UK*nline for nearly 7 years, I think I've seen how the demographic lies. A lot of people are going to be screwed.
No one talks about being able to read, never mind using a freaking computer...?!
-
-
Monday 6th February 2012 11:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
So the people that need this thing most...
... are shunted off to the slow path?
Because, you know, the people that don't need it much are so much easier to cater for, and can be made to jump through all the hoops requiring fancy machinery, saving pennies on entry and exit costs in the full process execution.
Sounds like the newest government approach to this "digital" thing is not to horribly fail in execution but to get that right (enough for government work), only to find that the resulting machinery of highly integrated systems and properly trained civil servants might be delivering something, but not at all what they're supposed to deliver.
Because really, if the process inside the service is well-regulated, then it can deal with electronic, paper, or in-person submission with little difference and will respect citizens' wishes about how to be contacted. Not understanding this is a failure of understanding how to build your own processes.
-
Monday 6th February 2012 13:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Smirk
I like the idea of the "unmployment office" doing just that...
"The starting point, I said to our telephony collaboration teams based in Newcastle, was just think of a contact centre, but it has got no people in it and think of an operating model that has got no back office, and start from there," said Dover.
So yeah...at least they'll have "customers" waiting to test the new system :/
Though, if history is anything to go by, they'll forgo the testing and maybe even the rollout :)
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
