Three-years-late fit-to-work IT tool will cost taxpayers £76m A delayed IT system developed by the Department for Work and Pensions for its controversial benefits assessment contracts has cost the taxpayer £76m due to benefits assessments having to be done manually, according to a report by the National Audit Office. Outsourcers Capita, Maximus and Atos were awarded the deal for …
On the radio today, the egregious Ms. Hillier was forced to admit that the means testing cost *more* than it saves.
Like the bedroom tax (which has cost the UK far more than it will ever "save") this is proof that "austerity" is a political and moral process, not a fiscal or practical one.
> never attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity
In this case, it's not simply stupidity, it's ideological idiocy.
Call me David, Gideon Osborne and IDS have presided over the train-wreck that this Austerity, penalising the poor for being poor whilst desperately flogging off the family silver (and, latterly, the furniture) to their rich mates to try to make the books balance and now Gideon is claiming that there's a "cocktail of threats" (should that be a cock-up?) which mean that he has to keep on kicking the least well off in society because it's clearly *their* fault that the banks and financial markets crashed...
@Graham Marsden
seriously? Gordon, no more boom or bust, Brown sold the nations Gold at rock bottom prices & presided over the the biggest boom and bust in the nations history, he also bailed out the banks (the best thing he ever did imo, ensured a speedier recovery without the hassle of bankrupting is all due to negative equity).
I go to work to earn a salary, pay my direct & indirect taxes, pay my mortgage, pay my transport, pay my bills and live within my means, there are many who don't work, are provided a roof over their heads, means to pay their bills and provide food for their families, enjoying aspects to their lives like their families that i can't. i wouldn't trade my lot for theirs but if i have to downsize to a smaller pad in old age then surely they should too if they don't need the space?
Brown is often castigated for selling our gold cheap, but few people understand why he did it. See this piece from The Telegraph (that well known supporter of Gordon Brown) - http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/thomaspascoe/100018367/revealed-why-gordon-brown-sold-britains-gold-at-a-knock-down-price/. So, it turns out it was yet another bail-out of the banks!
I do think they have reasonably good intentions, its just really hard to apply them when your the government. First is the problem of getting a really good idea past the committee of doom (many levels of public sector) who will take genius and make it stupidity with ease and skill. Second the expectations of UK government after many years of spend happy, unlimited coffers and few results to try and apply austerity or even just money management probably inflates the cost an inefficiency of any implementation. Third the expectations of the populations to demand more and more spending from the gov while then demanding the gov should be spending less.
In the end I expect that leaves us with the worst of all worlds for us and for them.
"First is the problem of getting a really good idea past the committee of doom (many levels of public sector) who will take genius and make it stupidity with ease and skill."
You have NO FUCKING CLUE what you're talking about.
Buying into this mindset is PRECISELY what let the private sector through the door in the first place - this utterly groundless "private good, public bad" ideology.
Demonstably utter, utter bullshit.
The bedroom tax was meant to encourage those in social housing out of larger homes they didn't need so those in need could use them. often those in social homes don't need to make the same decisions as those in homes they own or pay a mortgage on. Austerity doesn't just apply to those who earn and pay taxes on their salary's.
The problem with encouraging those who have spare rooms to move to smaller accommodation is that all the smaller accommodation(*) is occupied by young professional couples who can't afford to move to larger digs.
(*) originally constructed as pensioner flats and then sold off under right to buy.
"half a billion quid to assess if people should get disability benefit? how much is that per assessment?"
Ask Maxima's shareholders - that's where the cash will end up...
Yet another PROOF that letting the private sector into delivering public services is a fucking awful idea: the "supposedly superior" private sector is routinely demonstrably shite, and yet the tax-paying public still pays shareholders' dividends,
Win-win for the private sector - once they' re in place, it takes IRREDEEMABLE levels of incompetence to shift them (see "Atos"); and the tax payer picks up the bill for that incompetence right down the line.
"PPE is making it look humane."
Considering the level of Economic competence of |those PPEs ruining the country it ought to be PPe, or maybe just PP. Oxford Uni should be considering rescinding the degrees of people who have demonstrably failed to apply the 33% E part of their degree.
I fail to understand why these clowns continually receive central government and public sector contracts, despite inevitably being involved in virtually every IT system that fails or goes over budget. I also do not understand why the populace are being burdened with the cost of a system that's now over 2 years overdue and supposedly should have been implemented under contract (which would generally imply it's the supplier's responsibility, not ours, to resolve and/or pay for any issues).
I shall leave it as an exercise for the reader to find the links between these individuals and the Tory party:
Oh, and these ones too:
It may help elucidate...
Step 1: Ensure public servants are not paid what they are worth or outsource them.
Step 2: Ensure the contracts you get the remaining civil servant to look at contain special case law exceptions that the new 'cost effective' public servants will not have heard of. If they have offer them a job sharpish and continue to ride roughshod through the loopholes the civil servants didnt spot.
That is the problem. Private companies that work for the government know that the government has an unlimited amount of cash. Once you get the gov to sign something, you have them by the balls, over-budget is common place because the gov has no alternative than to pay.
In Marseille they made a public offer for a tunnel, they chose the cheapest offer, they have to by law ... half way through the digging, the private company stopped claiming the soil was not what they had originally expected, too rocky. In the end, Marseille city paid three to four times the original quote to get the tunnel finished off.
The current president of the Bouches du Rhone department is currently under investigation, he hired the company of his brother's to create a dump for the city (cost: 400k), the company sub-contracted, the subcontractor subcontracted another which for 20k built the dump. Obviously, the president in question "refutes" any wrongdoing, does not want to resign...
"The DWP uses health and disability assessments to help decide if people are eligible for benefits or to help those on long-term sick leave back into work."
Let me put that into terms as anyone who has experienced it will understand it.
"The DWP uses 'health' and 'disability assessments', which boil down to a list of 'yes' or 'no' answers to very complex situations that could never fit into yes or no answers, to try to force people off benefits they are entitled to. There is no thought given to how it affects those found 'fit' (almost all in my experience) and once found 'fit' you are then at the mercy of the increasingly sanction-happy 'job centres' who have no targets except for the targets they are pushed to meet. Oops, ignore that bit."
However, as someone with a long ITR background, who knows there is a "right" answer, and a "microsoft" (or Oraclem etc) answer, I was able to fill in my wifes ESA50, and get a confirmation of entry to the support group by return post, with no examination or assessment needed,
Currently we are over a year overdue for a re-assessment. Glimmers from the grapevine suggest that this may be postponed indefinitely for her. The 50 page supporting (cross referenced and clearly printed from an electronic source) document might have something to do with it. They'd much rather deal with people who *don't* know what they are doing. Which is despicable IMHO.
"The DWP uses health and disability assessments to help decide if people are eligible for benefits or to help those on long-term sick leave back into work close to death and unlikely to be around long enough to pursue the removal of their support payment through the courts."
"There is no thought given to how it affects those found 'fit' (almost all in my experience) and once found 'fit' you are then at the mercy of the increasingly sanction-happy 'job centres' who have no targets except for the targets they are pushed to meet. Oops, ignore that bit.""
Best ignore all of it, I reckon...
Believe me, the poor sods that have to deliver this system give PLENTY of thought to all of the ways that it fails as a way to deliver fair, targeted support to claimants: it's another ideologically motivated and utterly unfair regime which is HATED by the DWP staff who are obliged to apply it.
JCP staff are NOT "sanction happy'' - their POLITICAL MASTERS are sanction happy.
But it's what YOU voted for when you put your "x" against your Tory MP's name...
>That's a bit of a harsh generalisation considering the majority of people didn't vote Tory. On the other hand, would Labour have been any different?
That's a bit of a harsh generalisation considering the majority of people didn't vote Tory. On the other hand, would any other have been any different?
Fixed that!
"JCP staff are NOT "sanction happy'' - their POLITICAL MASTERS are sanction happy"
However their masters may be, the staff would be a lot more careful if they faced personal legal liability for bad decisions.
The results of that caution would be between them and their masters but the words "constructive dismissal" are enough to scare most accountants.
" and once found 'fit' you are then at the mercy of the increasingly sanction-happy 'job centres' who have no targets except for the targets they are pushed to meet."
I had the misfortune of working as a temp in one of said job centres a few years back, and they are not at all 'sanction-happy'. Almost every member of staff was vehemently opposed to the sanction regime and universally critical of the fitness tests (which were being run by Atos at the time). Unfortunately anyone who wanted to stay in a job was required to implement the policy to the letter.
On more than one occasion I saw staff in tears because they had been required to sanction people who were clearly in desperate circumstances but had fallen foul of guidelines through no fault of their own.
Meanwhile the professional benefits cheats (and everyone working at the Job Centre knew who they were) went largely unscathed by the sanctions regime, as they knew all the get-out clauses and loopholes in the system that would allow them to keep on claiming.
As for disability assessments, at the time the Atos assessment centre was a few hundred yards up the road from the job centre in a nondescript building. People who had received their 'invitation' for reassessment often came to the job centre, thinking that was where they were supposed to be.
On numerous occasions, those people ended up being driven to the Atos centre by job centre staff in their own cars, because they were simply not capable of walking the extra distance and the effort made to make it to the job centre had already taken its toll. And once there, they'd have to be helped by job centre staff to make it up to the 2nd floor where the Atos office was, because the building had no disabled access.
After all that, the 'fitness assessment' would often last less than 10 minutes, and the same staff who had helped the person make it to the assessment would then be in the position of being told to declare them fit for work. It's a horrible situation for both the benefit claimant and the civil servants who are required to implement the policy. During the 2 years I was there the job centre was haemorhaging staff who simply couldn't deal with constant strain/trauma of making life-destroying decisions based on edicts from above.
So no, job centres aren't "sanction-happy".
The bit that gets me is it is a qualified "doctor" that signs them off sick, and then they are asked to go and be assessed again, at even greater expense by someone not nearly qualified to be over turning the doctors diagnoses. Either our politicians think our doctors are all incompetent in which case they may want to consider retraining them to a higher standard, or this is purposely set out to cause suffering and make a tidy sum in the process. Btw the doctor has the option to select lightduties or not fit on the sick note. if they want to catch fraudsters start hiring detectives.
But they would have to be people who are prepared to cut other people off from benefits for the crime of being disabled, to starve other people into hopelessness and suicide for being unable to jump through impossible hoops.
Those who are already in that situation themselves might be less than willing to co-operate?
Reminds me of a house bound relative who was asked told they had a disability assessment interview in a nearby town...
Great logic for these assessments really. If you can attend the interview you can attend work so no benefits, if you can't attend the interview then you're obviously hiding the fact that your not disabled, so no benefits.
"Indeed. They might actually understand a person's situation and show compassion. That would never do."
And how - exactly - are the staff supposed to do that when the policies and procedures they're OBLIGED to work to ALLOW NO ROOM FOR DISCRETIONARY DECISIONS?
Don't blame the staff for doing their job - it benefits nobody for them to try and make decisions that can't be supported by the applicable rules: they lose their jobs, and the poor sods at the pointy end of the assessment will still end up with the decision that the rules demand.
Still - please feel free to continue proffering opinions subjects you know nothing about.
An online form for the claimants GP to fill in with the following Questions:
Does the claimant have a disability? (y/n) # if no, then please ignore the rest of the questionare
What is the disability?
Does the disability preclude the claimant of physical labour? (y/some/n) # if "some" please use space provided to describe what physical labour the claimant is not capable of.
Does the disability preclude the claimant of office based non-physical work? (y/some/n) # if "some" please use space provided to describe what office based non-physical the claimant is not capable of.
Does the disability limit the claimants ability to travel? (y/n)
What are the claimants travel limitations?
.
I'll set it up for £20 million.
As usual, 30 minutes and £50 worth of coding, testing and debugging.
12 months and £17m of compliance and stress testing (which will, of course, be utterly pointless and wrong but has to be done), a further month and £1m to incorporate a module at the request of GCHQ, another 24 months and £10m to write the manual and have it translated into 160 languages, and a further £10m in decommissioning V1.0 as it's replaced by V2.0 which adds something or other pointless but is written by the new incumbent minister for work and pensions's cousin's company.
>is written by the new incumbent minister for work and pensions's cousin's company.
in France, they are shameless enough to choose the brother's company, see de Robien (speed cameras), Guillaume Sarkozy (extensive reductions in public healthcare, picked up by private) ... I could go on ...
You repeated the original mistake. It used to be a once-only declaration from the GP, with no re-assessment ever required.
The problem the assessments were intended to solve is very simple:
A lot of claimants no longer had a valid claim, for two major reasons;
a) Their condition had improved.
b) They had died or left the country, someone else was getting the money.
Thus, everyone who was claiming had to be re-assessed.
So far, everything makes sense.
Every claimant should be re-assessed at intervals - their condition may change and thus need more or less help.
Because nobody had been re-assessed for a decade or more, everybody had to be checked at once.
That was fuck up #1
Then the DWP decided to outsource the thing to a random supplier, instead of to GPs. (Not sure why but I suspect BMA complaints)
That was fuck up #2
Then the supplier fucked it up completely.
The idea was good. The implementation was a complete and total fuck up from top to bottom.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
