The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is developing a range of e-services for jobseekers and benefits claimants underpinned by a new IT strategy, the minister responsible said on 12 January 2006.
The DWP is also planning to launch e-services for benefits claimants to make appointments with advisers for medical checks and for jobseekers to enter CVs electronically into employment databases.
In order to deliver the services, it has put together a five point IT strategy which involves setting up a single enterprise architecture across the department, integrating applications and services, linking legacy systems, using commercial off the shelf software and adopting an incremental approach to implementation.
Timms also defended the IT performance of agencies run by his department. The Liberal Democrats had earlier criticised the DWP, highlighting figures showing that key agencies such as Jobcentre Plus were still under-performing despite the introduction of new systems.
According to the figures issued to MPs, only two out of 21 Jobcentre Plus contact centres had hit targets to call claimants back within 24 hours. The Lib Dems have warned ministers to halt the agency's Customer Management System IT programme.
"Completion of the national roll out of the Customer Management System must be put on hold, or they will be extending a failing IT system to even more customers," said Lib Dem work and pensions spokesperson Danny Alexander.
Timms hit back, saying that according to the latest figures all but one of the Jobcentre Plus contact centres are hitting call response targets.
"I'm not saying that all of this is easy," he told a press briefing. "We have had our challenges, but my point is that we are successfully resolving them and through it all customer satisfaction is going up.
"If you look at some of the things that the Lib Dems say, you get the impression that the service is collapsing. Quite the contrary; the service is getting better."
Timms also defended IT performance at the Child Support Agency (CSA). He said that the DWP is working closely with supplier EDS to resolve the IT problems at the agency, and that the "system is now stabilising".
In January, CSA chief Stephen Geraghty told Parliament that although service levels with the child support computer system (CS2) are now being met, EDS has agreed to resolve "a number of defects" that still remain.
The agency has made a number of requests to EDS over the past year, Geraghty said. These include: providing an automated facility within CS2 to allow staff to record additional information provided by clients in note form; additional functionality to support the conversion of old cases to the new scheme; and the capability to capture and record audit trails.
Timms confirmed that Geraghty is shortly to report the results of a detailed review of the CSA's operations.
Speaking alongside Timms, chief operating officer at the DWP Stephen Holt said the implementation of the CSA computer system would be "the last example of a big bang development as long as I'm in the job".
He said that the DWP is working with EDS to "enact an agreed series of remediations" so that the system "does what it was designed to do".
Quelle: KableNET, 13.01.2006
