Perhaps the real mistake is in trying to make existing systems fit the new idea. It would be much easier, technically, to abolish all existing state benefits and start a new and entirely separate universal credit system to take over. Politically of course, this would be a very hard sell - not least to the civil servants and local authority staff seeing their careers vanish overnight.
Iain Duncan Smith's Universal Credit: A timeline
Universal credit, the proposed one online benefits system to rule them all, has always been Iain Duncan Smith's brainchild – but with his shock departure from the Department for Work and Pensions, will the government finally put a bullet in the troubled project? Announced with great fanfare in 2011, the programme intended to …
COMMENTS
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:26 GMT Bc1609
Re: existing system and new idea
I strongly suspect that was what IDS would really have liked - I can definitely imagine an army man looking at the absurd system where you get paid six different types of benefit and then have most of them taken away in taxes again, only to receive more top-ups for the amounts taken in tax (my wife and I have been on the receiving end of this and it's a bloody awful way to live and near-impossible to track or budget for properly) and wanting to throw the whole lot out and start again with a single layer of admin instead of the fifteen or so currently in place.
Perhaps it would even have been possible in the age before centralized government IT projects - but maybe I just have a rose-tinted rear-view mirror. Plus of course the vested interests you mention - it's going to be very interesting when those DWP emails are finally released...
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Monday 21st March 2016 15:25 GMT Artaxerxes
Re: existing system and new idea
Thats actually more of an appealing way of working than our current 5 day a week, 9-5 lifestyle (9-5, who am I kidding, we work until we drop with just enough time to go home and sleep, if we get a weekend we're lucky)
Is it a fresh sheep? Do you have to kill it yourself?
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Monday 21st March 2016 21:51 GMT werdsmith
Re: existing system and new idea
Thats actually more of an appealing way of working than our current 5 day a week, 9-5 lifestyle (9-5, who am I kidding, we work until we drop with just enough time to go home and sleep, if we get a weekend we're lucky)
Three days a week sounds good on its own, but that's just the work you do for the Manor. The other 3.5 days you farm your own strip field (0.5 on a Sunday you go to church, no lie in or the squire will be round to kick your arse).
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Monday 21st March 2016 15:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: existing system and new idea
I think the days of ministers having to sell ideas to civil servants are long gone. These days it's the other way round!
So, the main factors blocking a complete re-working of benefits are political will and complexity of the reform.
I've though a lot about how this could be done over the years having been caught up in the whole, government gives you this amount , then takes this amount, then opts you up etc.
My conclusion is that the current system is crap and has been made worse and worse by succesive governments but....... a simple system is not as simple to ahieve as it first appears and it's hard not to start introducing exceptions and other complications once you get into the detail.
Samre sort of thing goes for paying our taxes too..... there's so much lost in overheads and inefficienices.
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Monday 21st March 2016 17:20 GMT Doctor_Wibble
Re: existing system and new idea
> once every lamas day you get given half a sheep
Why half a sheep? Would it not be better to get a whole sheep every alternate llama day? Or better yet, stop short-changing people and give them a fckn llama on llama day instead of pretending it's the same as half a sheep?
God, I despair at this country sometimes!
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:03 GMT kmac499
van_IT_y projects
DWP Universal Credit system to be twinned with DEFRA Rural Payments system.
Two systems totally screwed by ministerial micro mismanagement.
I genuinely feel sorry for any IT worker with either of these on their CV. or any of the other vanity projects such as
the Passport\Asylum system
the Police IT and Comms ( Airwave)
the Emergency Service Control Rooms
the Courts Libra
the NHS anything
Etc etc...
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Monday 21st March 2016 15:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: van_IT_y projects
Totally forgot about the "Airwave" project... I was on the receiving end when I ran with the Met police.... the system had such terrible reception it wouldn't work very far underground so whenever you went into the tube station, good luck calling for backup... there were even some police stations which had terrible reception so instead they replaced it with a "panic button", which of course, someone accidentally pressed once a night.. and then everyone's airwave was filled with the sound of "Acton police station is UNDER ATTACK! Acton police station is UNDER ATTACK".... then the circus followed where you had to call a guy who was smoking a cigarette in the car park to go in and just check that no, they weren't under attack....
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Can we get a breakdown of where this money actually goes?
It would be interesting to see which drain it is going down and whose trough it is filling. 15.8bn that's over half a HS2*.
*Before all the extra costs have been added due to all the errors and mistakes made during the lifetime of that particular white elephant.
P.S. Giving people on welfare the money to pay their landlords directly is probably one of the most stupid ideas the government has ever thought of. Which would you put first? Rent or Food? Especially when the council have a legal obligation to house you.
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
15.8bn that's over half a HS2*.
Work it out in man years, and it becomes far more distressing. If we assume that there's little or no additional hardware over existing systems, then costs are all manpower. At an assumed average cost of £75k per employee, we're talking about a system that will absorb over 200,000 man years.
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Monday 21st March 2016 18:31 GMT J.G.Harston
"Giving people on welfare the money to pay their landlords directly is probably one of the most stupid ideas the government has ever thought of"
Yay, and giving people benefit money to spend on food, 'leccy and clothes is stupid, the payments should go straight to the People Commisariate Of Poor People's Food.
No, if ***I*** am the claimant, *I***I**** should receive the benefit. My landlord's not the benefit claimiant, ********I*(********* am.
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Monday 21st March 2016 19:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
You misunderstand.
Food, Leccy, Clothes are things you choose to buy from whoever you want, rent on the other hand is a fixed cost for the roof over your head that is currently in most cases paid direct to the landlord so it's a case of if you have never had it you won't use it for anything else. Giving it directly to the claimant while cutting other benefits is going to put many claimants in a situation where they have to choose whether to use that money for other essentials. This is not a good idea because ultimately these people will get evicted and be unable to rent non-social housing meaning that they will be put up in travelodges (I have seen this in Tolworth btw) due to the severe lack of social housing. Will this help with the ultimate aim of reducing the welfare bill? Not a chance, if anything it will increase it. Therefore I stand by my original comment that it is the most stupid idea the government has ever thought off.
You make in interesting point about the People Commissariat Of Poor People's Food and I wouldn't put it past this or a future government to do just that using a voucher system like they do for milk. How you stand on such things is determined by how many channel 4/5 documentaries about people with 40 kids or living by sea on benefits you have had the misfortune to watch.
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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 13:21 GMT Jason 24
Anecdotal I know...
But there's not a cat in hells chance that giving the housing benefit payments to the other halfs brother would be a good idea, he really could not be trusted to actually give it to the landlord, it would be frittered away on full price dominoes take aways for the family or any other tat he fancied.
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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 16:06 GMT KeithR
"No, if ***I*** am the claimant, *I***I**** should receive the benefit. My landlord's not the benefit claimiant, ********I*(********* am."
Ah, but your landlord is "Business" - the Tories' natural constituency. It's OK to give public money to private interest...
http://www.thecanary.co/2016/03/18/osborne-distracts-britain-budget-drops-utter-bombshell/
Here you go, banks - have £22 BILLION. No, really - keep it. On us...
Love, Gideon.
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:28 GMT Voland's right hand
Interesting coincidence with him resigning right when the docs were to be published
I will concur with the mash on this one:http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/i-forgot-to-resign-over-benefit-cuts-last-year-confirms-duncan-smith-20160320107332
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Monday 21st March 2016 15:51 GMT Killing Time
Re: Interesting coincidence with him resigning right when the docs were to be published
Oh you cynic. Sadly though, my first thoughts when he resigned in a blaze of glory were equally cynical.
Politically and personally, would you want to be remembered for resigning on a principle (apparently he has some) or for squandering nearly half a billion pounds of public money in a time of austerity with sod all to show for it.
Hmmm…it’s a toughie….
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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 03:55 GMT veti
Re: Interesting coincidence with him resigning right when the docs were to be published
But he doesn't have "sod all" to show for it.
In a time of austerity, he's generated what someone just up-thread calculated as 200,000 person-years of gainful employment. In pretty decent jobs, too - that's assuming an average salary over 30k. So if the project has been going for 5 years, that's 40,000 full-time, middle-class jobs sustained for that time.
If you're Secretary for Work & Pensions, that sounds like a win to me.
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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 22:47 GMT JimC
Re: Interesting coincidence with him resigning right when the docs were to be published
> Or he generated a few 1000 low paid installer jobs and a few 1M/year bonuses
> for chums at the usual suspects.
Quite right, after all we want government to learn from the efficient private sector don't we...
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:29 GMT Gareth Morgan
As someone who has to make sure that a benefits calculator is kept up to date, I might be expected to have an interest in this.
Putting to one side the competence of designers and developers (far to one side), the whole project has been comprehensively shafted by political, rather than feature, creep. The original concept of a simple benefit, which was welcomed by benefits professionals, has been replaced by an increasingly complex and, in parts, unworkable system. A top-down design always has this potential danger, as detail is implemented, but in the case of Universal Credit that has been associated with rule changes, almost all of which have introduced new complexities. Most of these have been aimed at reducing entitlement, not just by lowering rates or qualifications, but by introducing sanctions and other time based limits. Add to this localisation and devolution, Treasury ignorance and HMRC's core place in the development of bottle-necks and all is clearly going to go to plan.
The people who are going to suffer at the end of this are not just those who don't, as IDS said, vote Tory. The worst hit will be the growing number of low earning self-employed who will face a complex, monthly nightmare of reporting their accounts to DWP, having a higher notional income than their real earnings, limited carry forward of losses and their 6 months previous earnings used to reduce their current benefit.
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:45 GMT Chris Miller
To reshuffle or not?
Cameron seems averse to reshuffles. In one way, this is commendable, ministers need time to grasp their brief and moving them every few years means they rarely achieve competence. But the downside is that catastrophic projects continue, because the minister's political reputations are nailed to them - that's been the problem with IDS and Universal Credit (good idea, woeful implementation). HS2 is another obvious example that needs to be swept away by a new broom.
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Monday 21st March 2016 14:48 GMT Anonymous Blowhard
"Can we get a breakdown of where this money actually goes?"
I think it would take a lot of explaining!
By my rough arithmetic assuming £100 per hour, 8 hours a day and 228 working days per year (365 - 104 weekends - 8 statutory holidays and 25 days annual holiday) gives over 86,600 man years.
According to this, the current day cost of the Channel Tunnel was £13bn, and that was over-budget by 80%, but still something of a bargain compared to UC.
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Monday 21st March 2016 15:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
"the project has been going on too long to be cancelled"
That is a sad conclusion. We've wasted X amount of money but rather than fess up to it we will continue to waste more.
Anyway, any new benefits system should not be IT-driven:
1. Define the new benefit entitlements
2. Implement it using a paper-based system
3. Migrate each step of the paper-based system into IT, incrementally
The trouble is, step (1) is always stupidly designed. As someone who has in the past claimed Working Families Tax Credit (child element), the number of forms to fill in each year was simply ludicrous.
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Monday 21st March 2016 15:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "the project has been going on too long to be cancelled"
Anyway, any new benefits system should not be IT-driven
But UK GOV (still) believes that IT is the way to drive "transformation", not the other way round. So that isn't going to happen.
Listening to all those "Web2" types didn't help that attitude.
Now, is the DartCharge payments facility still "Alpha" ?? <clickety-click> Yep, it is. Quelle surprise. Can't even get that simple thing into a production state.
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Monday 21st March 2016 19:09 GMT I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
Re: "the project has been going on too long to be cancelled"
I......
Dam was reading these in a http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/everyone-on-bus-writing-status-updates-about-each-other-20160321107351 frame of mind.
WTF posts stupid links like that on a serious magazine?!!! Bastard!!! Fucking bastard I can't read any more of this twaddle its all getting unconscionobbly real. Bastard!!!!
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Monday 21st March 2016 15:14 GMT Elmer Phud
Re: "the project has been going on too long to be cancelled"
Step 1 is always political as what is defined as requireing benefits alters constantly.
Not only that but I doubt if they had costed the expense of looking after* those affected by going off to serve thier country. What sort of cost has it been to try to manage the basic rebuilding of the physical side before abandoning them to the streets? The numbers of homeless young-ish men with mental issues and camo-trousers is increasing.
*we have a very long history of creating 'heroes' and then pissing on them when they return batterd, skint and unable to cope. We spend all our money on kitting them out for war (sometimes) and there's none left when they get back. There should be no need to rely on charities if the same country that paid to train, transport, feed etc.etc. actually continued to appreciate their help.
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Monday 21st March 2016 16:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
A word to chill those who lived through the 80s (and 70s)
"Nimrod".
A (mainly) IT project which led to GEC-Marconi being a worldwide laughing stock. (And younger readers going "Who were GEC" might already guess how things ended).
Mysteriously, the 3,000 change requests a year, each year (that's over 10 a day every day) from the MoD never get mentioned.
BACKGROUND: The RAF always wanted AWACS - a less capable but proven US system. UK civil servants insisted a British candidate needed consideration. Cost us £3 billion before it was axed. Jim Prior was Chairman at GEC and then a cabinet minister under Thatcher. But there was no conflict of interest. Apparently.
And for the tinfoil hat brigade, quite a few scientists from Marconi committed "suicide" in inventive ways. My favourite being the poor sod who decapitated himself by tying a noose around his neck, and a tree, and driving off ....
AC - I know too much !
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Monday 21st March 2016 20:09 GMT John Smith 19
Re: A word to chill those who lived through the 80s (and 70s)
"Mysteriously, the 3,000 change requests a year, each year (that's over 10 a day every day) from the MoD never get mentioned."
We should not forget the fact
Generally Evil Company, Go Easy CorpGEC was known as the home of the 9-to-5 Engineer.at the time due to management viewing them as vermin to be trapped or killed.Or their insistence on using a GEC mini computer for the main functions (rather past its sell by date in cycle time and memory) or it's novel use of the fuel as a coolant.
But at least it never got into service.
When the MoD spent a shedload of cash on the Nimrod upgrade in the early 2000 it did.
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Tuesday 22nd March 2016 09:43 GMT kmac499
Re: A word to chill those who lived through the 80s (and 70s)
I remember GEC had quite an enlightened set of career paths. It didn't insist on promoting capable scientists\engineers into management but gave them a path to remain in science\engineering.
They had a inventive set of job tiltle names parallel to the management grades. Which IIRC the highest grade, once you had proved yourself academically by pubishing papers producing patents etc,. was "'World Authority"
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Monday 21st March 2016 16:47 GMT Jemma
The secret diaries of Iain Duncan Smith, part the second..
Day 1021: Find out Gollum, all right, all right, George Osborne, actually Witch King of Angmar's nephew. Should have guessed, explains why Theresa May goes all Rudolf Hess and drools whenever in same room... Even creepier than hook handed terrorist crush..
Day 1028: In retrospect using Orc programmers not the best idea, but not as bad as their idea to use Ada for the coding, still we can always blame windows 8..
Day 1029: Most job centres still using Windows for Workgroups... Bugger.
Day 1035: Find out that Euro MPs get more money for less work than even I do. Most offended. In other news Theresa spending a lot of time 'straightening Gollum's tie'.. Would be convinced of innocence of that, if for some reason they didn't need to do it in broom cupboard...
Day 1050: Ooohh, a referendum on Europe, poor old Dave, he will soon, I suspect, enjoy the full Corporal Jones experience. He won't like it up 'im.. At least not without KY.
Day 1051: Eureka! Have figured it out. If I resign I can stuff them all at the same time.. No more Euro MPs, no more Dodgy Dave, no more whinging peons AND I can blame Gollum, totally stuff the party (oh you of little reality) and get away with it..
Day 1052: blamed Gollum for being too nasty to the peons (if you don't drive them ALL to suicide you can harvest them again, benefits claimants don't grow well if you plant them, but they make good fertilizer..). Went on Andrew Marr show, he saw right through it. Pesky Andrew Marr.
Day 1053: Relaxation, no more Gollum, no more Theresa. Looking forward to holiday somewhere rural and unspoiled, someone recommended The Shire, at least I think that's what he said.. I don't profess to understand the thing about pervy hobbit fanciers (maybe he means Liberal Democrat counsellors); Didn't feel like asking for details. I will miss the looks on young Conservatives faces when Ann. W did the bellydancing at conference, I thought it was only Orcs who had greeny-grey skin and bulging eyes..
Day 1060: Resignation horrible mistake! One more episode of Time Team or Quincy will take the gentleman's way out. Had high hopes for Four in a Bed, turned out not to be East Anglian dogging show. Most disappointed, turned out to be odd couples playing hunt the bathroom pubes for cash prize, Ick, almost as bad as Balrog porn (see Ann.W); After all I paid my TV licence and I only have 5 TVs. On other note, wondering why short hairy archaeology presenters on mind so much.. It's always the one with his favourite spade.. But Mick will kill me if I try anything..
Day 1061: Umm, why does that man in the pullover look so familiar...
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Thanks to Cassandra Clare and the Secret Diaries.
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Monday 21st March 2016 17:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Recruiting
CWJobs has been sending me the same job for 3 months now. Deputy IT Director for the DWP, based in Warrington, on £80-100k.
I'm not surprised that they've not filled the position yet. They might as well just call it "fall guy". Nobody in their right mind would want to be associated with that poisoned chalice, even for £100k a year... Talk about career suicide...
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Monday 21st March 2016 18:57 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Recruiting
You are not familiar with the idea of "departamental scapegoat"
I know a few professional ones. You look at their career and it reads fail, double fail, quadruple fail and you wonder how the f*** could these guys be still employed. Then you realize - they are teflonated and they come and sell that as a service.
You have a project which needs to be failed - you bring them in, they fail. They are sacked (and quite often paid a golden handshake), you have assigned the blame, they go onto their next project.
Lovely job if you can have it.
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