Hi all

Just seen the news on this sainted site that £259m of IT investment was not enough to get the dread ESA up on the system in time. It appears new claims shall be manually processed for the next nine months.

Does this not mean any enquiry made to the telephony sections of the regionalised Jobcentreplus will be utterly fruitless? The claim wont be on the computer and the operator will have nothing to read.

sham and bles are two syllables that leap readily to mind.

Regards
Rich

one of my colleague's clients received a ' send no more med certs, we'll review your incapacity in April 2010' in response to IB50. it was unexpected, and there is no obvious reason on this case why it wasn't referred for a medical exam. we would expect her to pass PCA, but didn't expect incap determination on this case without a medical. we speculated that it might be an 'easement' of some kind, while they concentrate resources on ESA (problems), but of course...we don't know...

Its interesting that you say that, I saw a client this week who has just been exempted from the PCA. Like yourself I would have expected her to pass a medical but exemption was a real surprise.

How else are they going to clear the decks for the 13 week asessment phase to work?

Apparently they are using either the JSA or the IS computer system for the ESA claims (they did tell me, I can't remember which), and then processing the bits that don't fit in clerically. This would suggest that they should have some info on the system.

It's a bit of a non-story this, in my opinion, because when Stephen Timms gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee on ESA a few months back, it was stated then that they were only using the IT system in one area so that they could test out how it was working before implementing it more widely.

I have to say that I think this is quite a sensible approach, as history would suggest that trying to bring such a massive IT project in on a national scale in one big bang could have had seriously negative outcomes for claimants if it had failed or not worked correctly.

It is the JSA IT system being used, along with the Pension Service IT system, with the former being used for benefit details and the latter being used for the claimant details if memory serves me right. If I can find the time, and I can find the evidence session, I'll post it up later on.

Thank you for the clarification Paul.... sorry it took your time.

It just occurs to me that they set the deadline of October 27th... acres of news print has been published on the subject yet come the day of implementation they do not have the machinery to implement the new benefit.

Rich

No worries at all, I've been living and breathing ESA for the past 2 years rather sadly. Anyway, I found the reference I mentioned:

Q14 John Penrose: How fast are you going to get through the other 63?

Mr Bartlett: I will explain what we are doing in terms of the deployment. We will be putting the CAM system into six contact centres and that will be available to serve all new applications for ESA from 27 October. At that point, and for about three months, we will only put it into one Benefit Delivery Centre and its associated job centres, and that is in Tees Valley in the North East. That is to ensure that we really understand that it operates in a live environment as we expect it to and that we can do any necessary snagging that needs to be done. The intention then, if everything is satisfactory through the evaluation of that, will be to roll out the Customer Account Management system across the remaining Benefit Delivery Centres and Jobcentres over about six months between February/March and September/October next year.

Q15 John Penrose: The other 63 are therefore going to be on some kind of manual parallel process.

Mr Bartlett: They will be operating in a very similar way to the way business operates within Incapacity Benefit today. The customer will make an application through the contact centre; that will be captured; a printed input document will be produced; and the Benefit Delivery Centres will re-key that information into the main payment system.

Q16 John Penrose: What are the implications for the accuracy, efficiency and costs of processing in running 63 parallel, effectively manual, variations?

Mr Bartlett: Again, it very much mirrors the way that Jobcentre Plus operates with Incapacity Benefit today, so we have been able to resource that interim operating model with an understanding of what those cost implications are.

2 July 2008 Employment and Support Allowance - Uncorrected transcript of Oral Evidence given by Rt Hon Stephen Timms, Mr Phil Bartlett and Ms Rebecca Sudworth: uploaded on 8 July 2008 Click here for link to evidence session

"What are the implications for the accuracy, efficiency and costs of processing in running 63 parallel, effectively manual, variations?

Mr Bartlett: Again, it very much mirrors the way that Jobcentre Plus operates with Incapacity Benefit today"

Aargh!