By Andy McCue, 5 July 2007 00:01
NEWS
A staggering £3.5bn in child maintenance payments from absent parents remains uncollected as the beleaguered Child Support Agency (CSA) continues to battle ongoing problems with its underlying IT systems.
IT problems have been at the heart of the CSA's troubles since the agency launched in 2003. For years the CS2 system developed by EDS has struggled to cope with claims and payments - and costs have spiralled.
The EDS system has cost around £539m to date and that figure is expected to rise to £1.1bn by 2010 when the contract ends. The whole CSA saga has been branded one of the "worst public administration scandals in modern times" by MPs.
The CSA is due to be replaced by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission in 2008 but a report by parliamentary spending watchdog the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has warned there will be no quick fix to the ongoing problems collecting payments from absent parents.
The CS2 system is not expected to operate as intended for at least another year - it still has 500 defects that need to be fixed to stabilise it, according to the PAC report. And although the backlog of cases has come down from a third of a million to 239,000, the report reveals that 36,000 new cases have become "stuck" in the system and are unable to be processed because of IT problems.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), to which the CSA belongs, is also criticised by the PAC for losing the ability to be an "intelligent customer" by outsourcing most of the CSA IT capability to EDS.
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The report said: "[The DWP] needs to strengthen its independent in-house IT capacity to challenge the validity of assurances given by IT suppliers and keep up to date with both technical and commercial developments in the IT industry by recruiting a cadre of high calibre IT professionals."
The CSA's operational improvement plan is expected to cost an additional £321m over three years, with £120m of that coming in direct funding from the government. Around £60m will be met through savings from the renegotiated IT contract with EDS.
Edward Leigh MP, chair of the PAC, said in the report there will be no quick solution given the scale of the agency's problems.
He said: "In 2008 the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission will replace the CSA. But it is by no means clear how this will benefit citizens or regain the confidence of those the agency was intended to help. The government must keep an iron grip on this new organisation to ensure that the lessons have been learned from the CSA debacle."
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. misceng
Intelligent customers are becoming scarce in Government. Successive regimes have tried to curry public favour by cutting down the Civil Service. Since administrators are tasked with the cutting down they have got rid of the professionals who have the expertise and who get the work done. The Civil Service wage bill goes down but the cost to the taxpayer goes up as expensive companies like EDS mess around trying to create the systems required. It is not entirely their fault as the aministrators placing the contracts do not have the expertise to brief the companies and write the technical specifications which should be the basis of the work.
Unless there is a major change in government thinking things will only get worse
2. Cassandra
The whole point of contractors is you hire their skills, technical expertise and resources. All the customer wants is an ICT system to meet their business requirements and not to have to train and devleop its own ICT resources to deliver this. If EDS can't identify the requirement or can't design and implement an ICT system to support the business then it is a pretty certain failure of EDS to deliver what was paid for. I don't think I'd ever hire them for anything.
3. Chris Goodman
If each member of CSA staff was tasked with PROPERLY completing a minimum of 8 cases each working day to earn their pay, regardless of computer or manual, then I'm sure we would see some result.
But CSA staff need not worry about their jobs, they will virtually all be absorbed by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission.
Logic assumes that those who have failed should be dismissed from public service to earn their keep in a competitive world - but don't hold your breath!!!