The 11 IT projects costing DWP £1.6bn

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is investing more than £1.6bn in various tech projects up to 2011.

The DWP has revealed which IT projects are being worked on along with how much each one is costing in response to a parliamentary question from Mark Hoban MP, shadow financial secretary to the Treasury.

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The biggest single project in the department is the pension transformation project that is predicted to cost £598m and is due for completion in 2010-11.

The project is aiming to improve customer service and boost efficiency in the pension service by allowing those dealing with the pensions service to do more of their business through a single contact point. The scheme was originally scheduled to be completed by 2006.

Other multimillion-pound projects include the DWP Change Programme which will be completed in March 2011 at a cost of £246m.

The project is part of the DWP Business Vision that is made up of a number of projects designed to improve access to information for the public.

One of the projects already partially up and running is the system to run the new Employment and Support Allowance scheme. The full rollout is due to be completed by October next year at a cost of £295m.

The online service allows people to start a claim or application for various benefits - such as jobseekers allowance or child maintenance - as well as state pensions.

The customer information system, a database for citizen information shared across the DWP, was completed in March this year at a cost of £88m.

Jonathan Shaw, minister for disabled people at the DWP, said in his written response to Parliament: "It should be noted that the scope of projects can change as they pass through their project lifecycle, and as plans and costs become more robust. At each stage of this process, they are assessed to ensure that they continue to fit with departmental strategy and continue to deliver value for money."

He added that the project costs don't take into account the running costs of the projects themselves as they will be outweighed by their financial benefits to the department.