Child Support Agency IT woes continue

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."