Universal Credit
An introduction to Universal Credit by DWP
Is it to close time wise with the issues involved
The Parliamentary challenge is that the national Audit office has made it very clear
The setbacks the watchdog identified included:
- Officials were "unable to explain" the reasoning behind the timescales or their feasibility
- There were no "adequate measures" of progress
- Computer systems lack the function to identify potentially fraudulent claims, relying instead on manual checks
- £34m investment in IT systems was written off
- The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) lacked IT expertise and senior leadership
- Delays to the rollout would reduce the expected benefits of reform
BBC"
Universal credit: Welfare reform 'poor value' watchdog says
The government's flagship welfare reform has been badly managed, is "overambitious" and poor value for money, the spending watchdog has said.
The National Audit Office said risks were taken with universal credit to hit targets, IT systems had "limited functionality" and an unfamiliar project management approach was used.
A national rollout of the new benefit has been delayed following IT glitches.
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Expenditure on IT systems has accounted for more than 70% of the £425m spent to date but the report suggested officials did not yet know whether the infrastructure in place would support a ational rollout.
While steps were taken at the end of 2012 to get to grips with some of the problems, the watchdog said the "underlying issues" had not been addressed.
Amyas Morse, the head of the National Audit Office, said the "relatively high risk trajectory" was met by "weak management, ineffective control and poor governance".
The BBC has learned that the overspend on the the governments flagship welfare reform programme could rise further, as £162m has been invested on new hardware and software, in addition to the £34m on IT systems.
The TUC view is featured here-The Guardian says"
Universal credit frontline: 'I'm left with nothing'
Kiran Singh, part-time lecturer and sole parent of nine-year-old, dreading move to streamlined payments
Kiran Singh is living on the breadline. The 35-year-old single mother from Harrow, north London, received her advice letter about universal credit from Harrow council three weeks ago. And now she's fretting as to how her already precarious circumstances might be affected.
Working 9am-3pm as a part-time lecturer, she sometimes manages to rake in extra cash by taking on design projects, but on average she takes home far less than £1,000 a month.
As sole parent for her nine-year-old daughter and in a low-income bracket, she is entitled to working tax credits and housing benefit. Yet with childcare costs, London rents, bills and a bus pass, she barely scrapes by. "It all adds up and I'm left with nothing," she says.
A failure to pay a few pounds here or there may send her precariously balanced finances over the edge, so she is not looking forward to the move to UC and its new streamlined payments system, which the National Audit Office has warned has veered dangerously off track and is suffering from serious software development issues. Software central to the design of an IT system meant to serve the day-to-day lives of approximately 12 million people has not materialised to specification or has been junked. The programme had to be officially restarted this summer, communication between staff is poor, and morale is low.
When about one-third of the staff were moved off the programme at the instruction of the project's new director, Howard Shiplee, in July, one senior manager wrote: "The plans to coordinate our communication of staff assignments have failed. We now have people sat together all over the programme, some who know, some who don't know, some who have seen lists with their names on, some who have heard their names are not on them, etc, etc."
In a leaked internal survey, DWP staff comments were damning and painted a picture of administrative chaos. "This is the third review in 16 months, no rollout plans, no confidence in going forward and stakeholders losing confidence in our ability to deliver," wrote one civil servant.
"After 29 years of service this has been the most soul-destroying work I have done," wrote another.
Singh also fears that under the new culture, where the mantra is "more and better paid work" she might be told by job centre advisors that she'll have to take on more hours or face receiving diminished benefits.
She can't see how she will find time to search for extra and better paid work even as her daughter gets older. "I'm a single parent. I have to be with my daughter. I can't work full time until she can look after herself."
Fiona Weir, the chief executive of Gingerbread, a charity for single parents, said she was concerned that the delayed introduction of universal credit has meant many millions of people simply aren't being informed about how the programme will affect them.
"There has been virtually no communication about when these individuals and families – nearly 2 million of whom are single parent families – can expect to move on to universal credit, and what it will mean for their often precarious finances."
So what is the Staff view point
Well "The Guardian " put this article together based on a leaked report
So what is the Staff view point
Well "The Guardian " put this article together based on a leaked report
Staff working on the biggest shakeup of the welfare state in its history have described the project as "soul-destroying" and "unbelievably frustrating", with some saying they are under so much pressure that they can only engage in "firefighting and panic management".
A leaked internal survey of scores of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) employees working on the government's flagshipUniversal Credit programme describes an environment of poor management and high levels of stress. Labour said the survey was "utterly damning".
Universal Credit (UC) – the brainchild of Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary – seeks to streamline and integrate benefit payments for millions of claimants. It is a huge IT project that has been hit with a number of setbacks in recent months.
Interim results of the staff survey selected by the DWP's business change director and distributed back to staff last week were mainly negative. One civil servant writes of "a near complete absence of anything that looks like strategic leadership in the programme". Another says: "There is a divisive culture of secrecy around current programme developments and very little in the way of meaningful messages for staff or stakeholders explaining what will happen and when."
Taking a direct swipe at managers, another civil servant says: "I have never worked somewhere where decision making was so apparently poor at senior levels … and communications from that level was totally nonexistent. This programme should be a case study for how not to engage with your people to get the most out of them."
In an email to programme staff on 23 July, the business change director, a senior civil servant, admits that the initial findings from the survey revealed that there was "much room for improvement".
"We received some very honest comments, which is exactly what we need if we are truly going to address your concerns and make things better … Many comments focused on communication – colleagues were unclear about both their role and future plans for UC. There were also a significant number of comments about senior leadership and the culture within UC.
"Clearly there is much room for improvement and we are starting from a pretty low base. However, without this honesty it would be much harder to tackle positively and move forward. With your help we will do all we can to make Universal Credit the great place to work that we all want it to be."
The report found that 68% of employees responded to the survey. The highest ratings came from staff who said they were "treated fairly and without discrimination". However, the lowest ratings were given when staff were asked if "senior leaders listen to my concerns and act on them" and "I understand the programme vision for UC and what success looks like".
Comments included: "After 29 years of service this has been the most soul-destroying work I have done," and: "There is too much dishonesty and no one ever admits to making a mistake."
Another said: "This is the third review in 16 months, no rollout plans, no confidence in going forward and stakeholders losing confidence in our ability to deliver."
One respondent to the survey complained that stress was damaging people's health.
The shadow employment minister, Stephen Timms, said: "These testimonies from the heart of the Universal Credit programme are utterly damning. No strategic leadership, no plan, no idea. The scheme is in chaos.
"The truth is Universal Credit is in crisis and everyone knows it. It's time for Iain Duncan Smith to admit this project is in deep trouble, come clean about how bad things are, and ask for help, because if things stay as they are this flagship will sink – taking hundreds of millions of pounds of public money with it."
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union, which represents 80,000 civil servants in the DWP, said: "Universal Credit is defining Iain Duncan Smith's time as work and pensions secretary, lurching from crisis to crisis and showing the failings in the government's obsession with ideology over proper investment and support for people who are out of work. The views of the staff could not be clearer and they really must be listened to."
The DWP acknowledged that its staff had raised important issues and said that a new management team had been put in place following the death of Philip Langsdale last year.
A DWP spokesperson said: "Universal Credit is in a new phase following the successful early launch in Greater Manchester and the announcement of how the new benefit will roll out across the country from October.
"A new management team with clear strategic leadership is in place led by Howard Shiplee, one of the UK's leading experts in delivering major projects including the Olympic Park. As a part of this, we are working with staff to understand the issues they were facing, just as any responsible employer would."
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