Forum Home → Discussion → Universal credit administration → Thread
DWP spending on IT contractors rockets amid Universal Credit delays
By Chaminda Jayanetti via sentinelnews.co.uk:
Spending on external IT contractors by the Department for Work and Pensions has rocketed to £8m every month in a desperate attempt to get the heavily delayed Universal Credit scheme back on track.
Monthly workforce figures published by the DWP show that departmental spending on “specialist contractors” has more than doubled in just eight months, reaching £8,272,817 in April this year.
It would be interesting to know how that breaks down. One of the ongoing nightmare scenarios with these things is that the costs are often not on the projects themselves.
IT provider promises the world once again and under-delivers. I am being polite with that last term. Government want the work done; don’t want any embarrassment but the provider doesn’t think they can deliver what is being asked for, so there follows a negotiation as to how provider a) steps away whilst provider b) steps in. Provider b) of course has already failed on a different project.
Provider a) wants a pay off for stepping away. Government wants them to go away. Provider a) threatens legal action, especially if certain ministers are happy to slate them publicly. Provider a) secures a different DWP project so their losses are mitigated. Provider b) steps in having just been through the same process themselves. It’s a constant redistribution of work caused by the Pavlovian belief that if you keep doing the same thing you eventually get a different outcome.
So, how much is because UC IT input is being stepped up and how much because people have been pushed away from that particular table and now have to pick up their crumbs elsewhere? How much of the UC stepping up is down to in-house IT is another interesting aspect of this.
If you want to crunch some numbers Mike, the payments are all here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-payments-over-25000-for-2016
I am recovering from last nights magnificent Welsh performance. At present my PC monitor is holding up my head. So, maybe later 😊