Universal Credit? Universal DISCREDIT, more like, say insiders The controversial Universal Credit online benefits system is so flawed that skilled IT staff working on a pilot scheme have been forced to enter data by hand, two high-ranking whistleblowers have told The Register. The senior civil servants contacted us separately to warn that a trial of the new benefits system shows it is …
" Sometimes I think it would be good for the public sector to sell up to the private sector for almost anything and then reintroduce services piecemeal and properly."
Not really been keeping up with this have you?
Most UK public sector work is outsourced already.
Software development being a big part of this.
The actual software for this is not in fact being developed by civil servants by the oligopoly of conslutants we call "The Usual Suspects."
The results are as you see them.
@John Smith 19
"Not really been keeping up with this have you?
Most UK public sector work is outsourced already."
Outsourced is not private sector. If a private company exists because it primarily exists to serve the public sector then it is public sector. There was an interesting program showing how we have a huge public sector (was near the end of labour) but if we include businesses that exist for the public sector (cant survive without its money for work) the public sector was even bigger.
"The actual software for this is not in fact being developed by civil servants by the oligopoly of conslutants we call "The Usual Suspects.""
And why is it an oligopoly? Why do the gov keep going back to those who bend them over a barrel and run off with our money? Because its easier to do that and get away with it than to try and do a good job. Add a few layers of red tape and nobody is to blame. Do this long enough and a poor job is the expected norm. Hence the comments on here.
If the gov stopped trying to be clever (they cant) they would do more good. By selling out to the private sector these monsters of inefficiency and failure will fall or improve. And in the areas where the private sector is too expensive (for bad reasons) or not providing well enough the gov can use the vast buckets of cash freed up to start a national service in that sector. And because its a new effort looking to experts to get off the ground it can be done properly.
"The results are as you see them."
We accept the results because they are the norm. They accept the results because we let them.
Should consider themselves lucky that the Gummint is so incompetent that they require a large pool of staff to shore-up this creaking catastrophe. A load of them have been laid off (not the generals, just the cannon-fodder). Some of them are very skilled and so were rightly booted out in favour of keeping the expense fiddling Mandarins. A friend of mine is now on this here minimum wage in a menial job, which is a waste of her considerable talent.
I love politics, if it weren't for my damn conscience I thing I could go a long way!
Classic example on the Today programme this morning. The Gov't rep explained that the Royal Mail must be privatised because it is making a profit, while the Post Office must remain public ownership because it is running at a loss.
The idea of funding the loss making counter service with the delivery service was not even considered. No mention of the gov't / tax payer retaining the pension liabilities and it is a fair bet that the tax rake from Royal Mail will fall as well.
Yes, when challenged with the prospect that rural deliveries would be severely limited (or even stopped altogether) the imbecile replied that he thought it would be a good idea. Apparently, now everyone has the interwebs, they don't need snail mail at all. He's unbelievably cynical, or unbelievably ignorant (or possibly both). Someone who was bound to float up to the very top of the cesspool...
"The governments policy is to run all public services badly, blame that on socialism, and then sell it to their capitalist funders."
So go on then, explain to us how true socialist countries provide good quality services at an affordable cost. I suggest you start off with the USSR, then help us understand the workers paradise of Cuba, the economic success story of Venezuela, Mozambique and so forth?
Personally I'm sick of paying through the nose for government's sh*tty "public services", most of which I don't want, and those I do costing too much and under-delivering. Not as part of any grand scheme, but simply because the public sector enjoys a monopoly of provison, yet is unaccountable and incompetent. Look at the generally poor standard of state education in this country. There's no plan to privatise it, but the answer that the public sector has for the sh*t standards it delivers is to have a regulator (at extra cost) to ensure "fair access" to higher education (plus OFSTED supposedly driving up standards). Now explain to me why there's money for useless regulators, but no will to sort out the poor quality of state education? Was that some capitalist plot by the last Labour government?
You guys are talking right past one another, arguing about whether government or private enterprise is worse. The thing is, they both are; and recent attempts to blend them together (as in the railway "service") have been magnificently successful in combining the worst points of both public and private, without any of their redeeming virtues.
Human beings will always seek to attain their goals with as little effort as possible. The trick is to design systems that force them to work hard in order to get rewards. Unfortunately, those who end up in positions of power and authority are always able to leach off the great majority who aren't.
As for those who praise the private enterprise system, consider that any large corporation is run - on the inside - along lines that make Stalinism seem positively democratic.
We should save the energy wasted in futile arguments about "public versus private", and use some of it working out rational incentive systems. The ancient Athenians had a good method at one point, when they elected officials for a year at most and voted on their reward - or punishment - at the end of that period. The effect was to concentrate minds quite effectively; at the very worst, unsatisfactory performers exiled themselves to avoid punishment.
"The thing is, they both are; and recent attempts to blend them together (as in the railway "service") have been magnificently successful in combining the worst points of both public and private, without any of their redeeming virtues."
As somebody old enough to remember the shocking performance of British Rail, and who travelled widely and regularly on the network, I'm staggered anybody is daft enough to claim that the current situation is the worst of all worlds. Those poor ****ers who got rattled slowly and unbelievably uncomfortably up and down the WCML by BR wouldn't swap their fast, comfortable Pendolino's to go back to BR's manky offer. The current standards of punctuality are far better than BR's, the staff usually polite and helpful (exceptions I know, but nothing compared to the surly vermin that dominated in BR days), and traffic volumes and efficiency far better than anything BR managed. BR managed a few hits (like the HST), but only because Brunel had laid the tracks straight almost a hundred years earlier, and on routes like NE-SW they built the HSTs but then failed to straighten the line.
The BR apologists and pro-nationalisation lobby can't stop hankering for a mythical 1950's Nirvana of Will Hay and the pre-Beeching era, ignoring the fact that government was always a poor steward of rail assets largely built by the private sector, and that people used the railways under state ownership less and less of their own free choice. If you want state owned railways, then go to India.
Ledswinger, this week someone I know booked a ticket to travel from Cambridge to Manchester, having arranged three meetings for that day. The train never reached Manchester! Some nonsense about signalling problems, catkins on the line, wrong kind of sunshine... The return ticket costs £189. And you think that is good service?
" BR managed a few hits (like the HST), but only because Brunel had laid the tracks straight almost a hundred years earlier, and on routes like NE-SW they built the HSTs but then failed to straighten the line."
Wrong.
Brunel did not lay "straight track. He laid flat track that avoided hills as much as possible because trains (in his day) were rubbish at gradients and flattening hill without JCBs needed 1000s of Irishmen and was a general PITA.
Old solutions become new problems and HST's genius was accommodating high speed using the existing track, not the TGV solution of simply laying a new straighter network.
Should you have any interest in the real reasons why BR was so s**t I'd suggest "Blueprint for Bankruptcy" by EA Gibbins.
Please feel free to continue your rant.
Yes it's an anorak.
You do realise, I hope, that "privatised" railways enjoy approximately 3x x the amount of public subsidy that nationalised BR ever received? £3.9Bn in 2011/12, 35% of revenue, came straight out of taxpayer pockets.Subsidy went as low as 26% at one point, but then the accidents due to cost-cut maintenance became embarrassingly lethal and Railtrack collapsed,. Perhaps your idealised view of privatisation contains nuts..
Oh please its standard operating pracice in the civil service, at least with this they are prototyping it to make sure the thing works before just pouring 8 Billion down the drain like labour did with the NHS Connecting for health bollocks.
I'd like them to spot the problems now rather than later on, and quite frankly condesing all those benefits into one payment means that we might actually cut down the legions working in the civil service. Why a system cannot handle a numeric valur being increased without a major redesign, tells me that somewhere someone is extracting the urine!
Thats a value in a dtabase table or should be, so why should canculations be so affected ?
Oh, it's a business change project and no one has considered the staff.
How not novel.
I've discovered that one of the Universe's little ways of letting you know "You f**ked up" is requiring manual data entry from an existing (and of course usually large) database.
Which one of the "Usual Suspects" got this con-tract? Don't be shy. Did you also right a conslutants report as well?
In other news. Man with gun goes berserk in Greater Manchester Jobcentre. Full story at 10.
This post has been deleted by its author
... if it sees the frankly evil IDS out of a job.
I suspect however that as usual an 'enquiry' will take several years and several million pounds to show that actually no-one was to blame, it was just that the toilet cleaners hadn't had adequate training. In the mean time toilet cleaning contractor has been changed to a new contract with a new company that just happens to have a very similar name to old one with similar board members none of whom are contributors to party funds, no siree, anyway that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead
Oh do grow up you idiot.. he's not evil he's trying to reform the benfits system that has been seen by a generation as a career choice. Maybe if you had a proper job and watched your moeny going to pay for the jeremy kyle generation , should be able to see why he's doing what he's doing!
@LPF
You make a good argument, apart from its failure to be backed up with any facts.
'Workfare', which is essentially slavery of those unfortunate enough to be unemployed, is nothing short of evil. When found to be infringing human rights, IDS's response was essentially, "Meh. Keep doing it anyway."
Most of the benefits budget goes not on the 'Jeremy Kyle Generation', but on pensions. It is barely possible to live on JSA. It was hard enough a decade ago when I had to do it, and in real terms, the amount you get has gone down, and the cost of living gone up. If you think IDs is even slightly in the right, you'd better pray you never find yourself unfortunate enough to be withou money and without a job, but then again, you're probably one of teh lucky ones who owns their own house, and has thousands of pounds in savings, and is currently seeing tax cuts for the rich.
@LoyalCommentator
The 'lucky' ones have mainly worked damned hard to have their own house, and even harder if they have managed to put money away as well. What they haven't done is had holidays, been drinking down the pub, smoking like chimneys etc etc because if they have they wouldn't have the money.. There are of course a very very very small umber who happen to know the right person at the right time and are CEO of some bank or other... but they are such a small number that while annoying they aren't really relevant.
The hard workers pay for their house and savings with sweat and time, they then see both taken away in taxes, funding old age or other things while being told that they have so much money they don't need the money that is given freely to the lazy feckless few who you see pissed as parrots every night of the week.
If the welfare system was actually doing the job you allude to - helping those on hard times - then I wouldn't mind. And no, I don't have a house, I don't have thosuands (or even hundreds) in the bank, I do work 2 jobs and a lot of hours - so one day I might - but a massive chunk of what I earn is taken in tax to pay for the rest.
@Dave 15
"The hard workers pay for their house and savings with sweat and time, they then see both taken away in taxes, funding old age or other things while being told that they have so much money they don't need the money that is given freely to the lazy feckless few who you see pissed as parrots every night of the week."
I probably would disagree with that statement until I started living across from a pub that houses these people. I would add to your list of vices the weed they smoke constantly which not only stinks out there but if I open the windows in hot weather it stinks the flat out too.
The pub was so bad that the police wouldnt come around no matter how many calls they got. That changed when the coalition announced police cuts. It might have been coincidence but I doubt it. I get the pleasure of working while they spend the day in the pub shouting at the top of their voices.It aint nice to see where my money is going.
If there were any relationship between hard work and prosperity, we'd have a world full of millionaire nurses and miners and road-diggers - and impoverished bankers.
It's tosh. Some of the currently-rich may have put in long hours, for a few years (as did many others), but they didn't get rich by working hard. They got rich by being lucky.
Right on, strum. Moreover, no one could accumulate the wealth that the richest members of society have by a lifetime of honest work of any kind. Some were lucky - they invested in the right stocks and shares, or bought the right piece of land. Others were lucky in a different way - like Simon Cowell, who managed to have the most average musical taste in the whole country, and parley that into a fortune. Or David Beckham, who happened to be good at a fairly simple set of skills that millions of people will pay to see.
If there is a relationship between wealth and hard work, it's most probably an inverse one.
"Oh do grow up you idiot.. "
I see that you buy into the whole government 'unemployed are all scum and are sucking the life blood out of the country' spin. or to put it another way it's always someone else's fault, divide and conquer is the mantra of government. As has already been pointed out so often that you would think everybody has seen it by now. Most welfare goes on pensions, most unemployed are trying hard to get jobs. If you 'euthanased' everyone in the country without a job it wouldn't make a dent in the tax bill you and I and all 'hard working' people pay.
Your are either stupid, gullible or a government minister. Whichever it is you should keep you mouth shut to prevent people seeing what a twat you are.
Apologies to Cassandra Claire & LoTR secret diaries...
Day 1: Have baaad hangover.. on reflection should not have drunk 15 jager shots on empty stomach. Resolved to make everybody as miserable as me.. feel oddly better..
Day 4: Big cabinet meeting, suggested to education secretary that things in need of shake up & offered mates job lot of RM Nimbus for new schools IT. Gove delighted. Evil fun.. go me!
Day 6: Dropped hint to Theresa that kicking out some 'terrorists' might distract the plans from acci-deliberate Police brutality. Mildly disturbed at the pin ups of Abu Qatada and the way she stares at metal claws.. court of human rights will kill her if she tries anything...
Day 15: woke up in cold sweat at 3am. Eureka moment. The benefits system. The most pain & the most gain! What could possibly go wrong..?
Day 20: Outsourced project to India. In retrospect project code 'white elephant' not wisest choice, although prescient.
Day 200: benefits project unqualified disaster - more holes in system than in Titanic & Star Wars Prequel plot combined. That said other evil plans proceeding admirably. Gove universally loathed, unions swarming all over him like amorous orcs..
Day 500: May have over egged the evil. Even rumors of new benefit system causing higher electoral attrition than Isandlwana. Still you can't make omelettes... being a cabinet minister means never having to say you're sorry..
Day 720: There is a God ... spying story finally broke.. press tired of Qatada (Theresa not so much it seems). Has distracted from benefits debacle that deserves more of a panning than a door to door Le Creuset salesman.
Day 721: Have admitted to self that one stop benefits shop not my finest hour. Evil plan seems to have rebounded. Not so much fun when poor the only ones not feeling the pain.
Day 800: Released new system anyway, what the hell; it worked for Microsoft... now for my memoirs..
Transcribers note: the text ends here and there is evidence of bloodstains...
Stories from March saying they're calculating UC Pathfinder claims by hand on spreadsheets shed light on the DWP statement:
" The Universal Credit IT has been working well during the Pathfinder". Yes, because the qualifying criteria for the pilot are very tight, because you are having to input the lot onto spreadsheets...
"There needs to be some sort of review of IP addresses and the DWP needs to be at the forefront of next-generation cyber-security, which I don't believe they are anywhere near."
Review of IP addresses? What exactly are you on about? This smells of a typical civil servant who hears some technical detail and then repeatedly spaffs it everywhere without having a clucking fue what they're talking about.
And as for security. It was all there in the offering and it could have been tighter than a nun's chuff but the DWP didn't want to pay for it.
I am so glad I don't have to deal with these retards anymore.
"Review of IP addresses? What exactly are you on about?"
C.
The Universal Credit IT has been working well during the Pathfinder
They may actually believe this. Because each layer of civil servants is polishing up the report from the previous layer before it goes up to the next layer, to make themselves look good.
By the time it gets to the top the report is that everything is working fine, and it's only much later when the problems can't be disguised that the people at the top find out what's really been happening.
And that brings to the second way the Universe has of telling you "You f**ked up."
Hand entry and spreadsheets for a system designed to support millions of claimants.
There must be someone with a)The necessary technical background and b)The necessary understanding of what this system is meant to do to realize this is wrong
Sadly it's pretty clear they have no power to change it.
Evidently the claim procedure is "Open claim_template.xls, fill in the numbers in the coloured boxes, then remember to Save As applicant_nino.xls in your Z drive. DO NOT OVERWRITE THE TEMPLATE!"
Beneft payments being issued by a batch job that opens every single xls file in that directory every night, and runs a special Excel VBA macro that concatenates a line to a CSV payments text file on the W drive...
What company was employed to build the IT system (which of the big boys), where was it built (UK, USA, India?). how much money has it cost (so far) and estimated cost by the end? I'd love to know this because I dare say there are many many small UK companies who would have done the job right for less using UK engineers in a fraction of the time but were overlooked in the purchasing decision because of the lack of foreign sales trips, back handers and of course 'seats on the board'
What incompetant single-braincell dumbass thought it was a good idea to pay everyone monthly?
Seriously, do they have any fucking idea how badly it's going to screw up some people's lives?
Imagine a 6 year old being given a larger than normal piece of chocolate cake and being told not to eat it all at once because that's all the good stuff they're getting for a whole week. How long do you think that cake will last.
Those scummy payday loans companies must be rubbing their hands at the thought of everyone moving to montly payments, knowing full well that they're going to score big from some people who currently struggle to live on weekly & fortnight benefit payments.
The decision to pay monthly is entirely arbitray. The UC system supports weekly and fortnightly payments (in as much as it supports anything). The Northern Ireland Assembly made it a condition of their acceptance of Universal Credit that weekly/fortnightly payments were possible, and the system is already set up to accomodate them. The rest of the UK is out of luck, however, even though they're using the same system.
Excuse me, people who have to go out and work manage to live on being paid monthly. It's called responsibility. It's called only spending what you can afford to spend.
Benefit récipients are *adults* and they can damn well be expected to act like it. Why should they be babied? Why should they have it better than the people who *pay* for their benefits?
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