Slashdot Mirror
UK Benefits System In Deeper Trouble?
judgecorp writes "Two media reports suggest that the Universal Credit scheme to overhaul Britain's welfare programme is in trouble. The IT project to support Universal Credit was launched by the Cabinet Office, and it will be completed and run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) — but the Guardian says the Cabinet Office has pulled out its elite experts too soon, while a different leak told Computer Weekly that the four original suppliers — HP, IBM, Accenture and BT — have been effectively frozen out in an internal change. It's the biggest change to Britain's benefits system for many years, and all the evidence says it's not going well."
Sounds like it's going well then...
To be fair a single NHS IT system is a very good idea. Its just a shame the contractors smelt money and decided to milk it for all it was worth rather than bother to deliver a working system. I actually worked for a small company that was subcontracted by a certain large telecoms company back in 2007 to work on a subsection of the DB side and we did our best , but unfortunately the powers that be at said telecom company just didn't give a sh*t. We'd send them new binaries which would then never get tested or if they did it would be months before we'd get an in the field report back. Utterly shameful.
Currently, Housing Benefit (rent) is paid to the tenant by default; However, if the tenant falls more than 2 months behind then payments are switched to go direct to the Landlord.
This change was made under the last Labour government as a way of encouraging tenants to get some practice at budgeting for expenses; Naturally for a small and feckless proportion of the housing benefit recipients, the extra money paid direct was a windfall they spent on drink, gambling and drugs.
Should be added that for most recipients the total of housing benefit received is less than the total rent and they are expected to make up any excess from their unemployment or disability living allowance payments (where 'rents' include standing charges such as power, heating, council tax anyway) - so even if the landlord has a defaulting tenant and gets direct payments from the local authority, they only receive the element of the total rent that relates to actual rent, and must pursue the tenant for the rest.
this system has caused many UK landlords to refuse to rent premises to recipients on housing benefit (although of course if a tenant went from employed to HB and kept up the payments rather than defaulting, the landlord would never know, which is some shielding...)
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
it wasn't just a database. It was a database that had to incorporate and interoperate with a vast array of existing legacy software written in every language you can possibly imagine. Not only this, it was a stupid idea to start with, because MOST patients don't move around the country and a series of smaller regional systems would have made a lot more sense for MOST of the problems in communication that could be solved by interfacing computer systems.
The project was hampered by problems of patient confidentiallity, and who was reasonably allowed to access patient records at any given time. Data needed to be tied to locations that the patient was frequenting e.g. my GP is allowed to see my records, the doctor in the A&E I've just been admitted to is allowed to see my records but a doctor at the other end of the country doing a bit of record-surfing is not allowed to see my records. except when he is?!?!
The hospitals themselves pretty much (quite rightly) tried to keep the national system at arms length because it was not clearly understood or believed to be core to their day-to-day activities.
All-in-all the government of the day would have done much better to define a minimum data set and standards for interoperation rather than interferring and trying to control everything centrally. Given a decent interface and data set spec the miriad of small (cheap) software vendors already supplying the NHS would have all been motivated to implement it so they could interoperate with each others systems in a more uniform (read cost effective) manner. Communicating between hospital departments and between the hospital and the patients GP then would have been a much more simple affair and this would have solved most of the communication delay problems that happen in the real world on a day-to-day basis.
Can't help thinking I'm feeding a troll here...
You keep on harping on the "EU immigrants" while avoiding talking about what is going in England.
You believe that EU immigrants only settle in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?
There are so many immigrants in England that in maternity wards across England's hospitals you find *MORE* non-white babies than the white babies !
As you no doubt know, race != nationality. This, I think, demonstrates why most of the mainstream parties like policies such as benefits clampdowns on immigrants and restrictions on student and marriage visas. It allows them to say 'we're like you, we're on your side' to racists and xenophobes, whilst not having to actually be (overtly) racist or xenophobic and putting off everybody else.
Most of those who are receiving "benefits" are people formerly from Pakistan or Nigeria or India.
42% of benefits are old-age benefits, mostly pensions. 2.57% is for the unemployed, who will also get a big fraction of the 21% low-income benefits (like housing benefit and council tax concessions). 18% goes to parents (not just poor ones, most/all parents get these). 16% is for the disabled and sick. So, Mr AC, which of these groups do you believe to be mostly people from Pakistan, Nigeria and India?
Also for those not following UK politics, almost all benefits are being attacked by the current government, except for the biggest part, old-age benefits, which are being protected despite pensioner incomes doing better than they have previously. This is for political reasons: old people vote more. Also, older people are more anti-immigrant and young (and more educated) people more pro-immigrant.