It appears that the DWP is run by a team of certifiable lunatics. do they have any suicidal ministers likely to authorise this madness?

Yet another reason not to give the DWP your phone number and to resist telephone claiming.

Quite. Unwilling to be screened for criminality in the exercise of a civil right. do you think they will bring in 'good cause' rules...?

when are these guys gonna realize it's possible to say no to IT reps? we have the technology to drive cars at 300 mph, but we don't use it on public roads...

oh wait... we pay our NI so the government can treat us as scum...?

don't you just love double-edged swords? 'Newsnight' might never be the same again...LOL!



jan

- In extreme circumstances, the assailants can be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain. I will repeat that: by removing the head or destroying the brain. - Shaun of the Dead

Following is extract from Silicon.com

"So far, the tech saved Harrow Council around £110,000 in benefits payments. It has helped to identify 126 incorrectly awarded single person council tax discounts - worth £40,000 - and prompted 304 claims to be reviewed.

Of these, 47 were found to be no longer valid, meaning the council saved another £70,000 in benefit entitlements."


VRA prompted 304 claims for review and 47 found to be no longer valid.
Choice of words- claims no longer valid not that they were fraudulent. Those 47 could just as easily have been cases of LA error and sloppy assessments. Bloody guarantee that if they had been fraud they'd have said so. It would be interesting to know. Maybe an FOI request!

Forgot. Official blurb is "126 benefit cheats". Isn't that really 126 Council Tax discounts. Thats what I call spin.

Have a look here

http://www.wikihow.com/Cheat-a-Polygraph-Test-(Lie-Detector)

You're link doesn't seem to work Paul (it says that there's no article but maybe its lying???)

There was a good briefing from the TUC when the trials were announced lies, damned lies and lie detectors

In my opinion, and it may be controversial, the most effective method for checking the veracity of a client's story is a face to face interview. But with JC+ seemingly embarked on a relentless drive to make almost all client contact occur via the telephone, I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised that the DWP have taken up this initiative so enthusiastically.

Interesting that this particular strategy isn't being mentioned in relation to the off-shore bank accounting initiative that was also highlighted on the forum yesterday. Is it the case that rich people don't lie?

The link doesn't work but if you copy the link into your address bar and hit enter then you should get the page that I intended.

http://www.wikihow.com/Cheat-a-Polygraph-Test-%28Lie-Detector%29

Thanks guys.

Maybe we should be considering a new chapter for next year's DRH perhaps?

Claimants not the only ones phoning callcentres. If this is rolled out presumably we'll be VRA'd as well. I had a pretty stressful day yesterday trying to get through a security fixated official at the Pension Service. If I'd been hooked up I reckon the bulb would have been going like a strobe light.

What happens if the client is unfortunate to suffer from a stutter, of has a foreign accent, or is just naturally nervous....?

We've had clients in the past who have suffered from various fixations, but this love affair with everything electronic and high tech is worrying - especially in a world where the customer base is populated by a high proportion of vulnernable people.

It's disconcerting enough that on the 08000 claim line number I find myself having a conversation over postcodes with a computer......

Welfare reights workers are not the only ones to think this is the biggest pile of, well you know what !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started a post yesterday after the news story, but my rant would have put even JJ's mightly posts to shame (only kidding JJ ) - so I gave up.

Suffice it to say - I agree with everything previously said.

One thing that does niggle me though, is that the DWP's own statistics prove that more money is lost through official error than fraud. So when the bloody hell will they start turning to themselves for money saving solutions instead of kicking the down and disadvantaged!!? Who is going to voice risk analyse the JC adviser who says "you can't get a crisis loan because you're not on JSA" or the LA adviser who says "yes, we always consider reasonablenss before recoving overpayments".

The biggest victims of 'fraud' are the claimants - defrauded of their lawful entitlements by poor skills and inadequate training, low pay, incompetence and yes, even lies!

There!

<blushing here!> i'd have liked to see you let rip, though... : )

i agree...and with everybody else too. : )

Have you had a good night's sleep now Tony? Lol!

now birmingham too .......

'Birmingham council, the UK’s largest local authority, is to install a telephone lie-detection system in an effort to identify benefits cheats.'

From the article: -

"The DWP said that such “voice risk assessment” was widely used in the insurance industry.

However, the Association of British Insurers disagreed, saying: 'The technology is not in common usage and is only used as part of a range of fraud-detection techniques because it is not infallible'".

An insurance company is not amenable to an article 8 challenge (right to respect for private life) because it is not a public body, unless you can find some other way of getting it into court and then use the argument.

I wonder what chance the success of an aricle 8 challenge against an LA or the DWP, particularly if the individual was not advised that VRA was being used? If the individual was advised in advance that VRA was being used then s/he might then refuse to comply and opt for a face to face interview instead, which the LA/DWP might wish to avoid. Any thoughts.

With my sensible head on, having now had a good night's sleep, I'm finding it difficult to see exactly how an article 8 challenge might succeed.

The technique is not invasive and it is very difficult to see how it could actually be used to determine entitlement issues. Therefore, the impact on an individual of VRA seems to me to be negligible and probably not amountable to an interference of the article 8 right. Even if is, I'm sure the government would be able to qualify the interference with it being proportional and in the best interests of the public purse - or something like that.

On balance therefore, I can't see any merit in an article 8 challenge (but I'm not a lawyer - Ariadne?).

Birmingham City Council are schtum so far on this as far as I can see, and I don't see that they can even have a business case, pretty much all that Corporate Brum understands...

it's a good question for consideration, but my initial thoughts are that it really very difficult to oppose this kind of thing effectively on an individual, and rearguard basis...it strikes me as a collective issue about the kind of democracy we have or want...obviously there a competing agendas, and debate, such as it is, isn't very balanced...

very pressed for time at the moment - will cool off and chew it over...

How about this for consideration? Article 8 also allows for respect for one’s correspondence. In Blackstones guide to the Human Rights Act 1998 (Blackstone Press 2000, edited by John Wadham and Helen Mountfield) it says, at p108 that “the right to respect for one’s correspondence is a right to uninterrupted and uncensored communication with others”.

It was ruled in Malone v United Kingdom (1984) that phone tapping by the government was a violation of Article 8 in that case.

Now obviously in VRA there is no third party listening in on private communications but I would certainly try to argue that secretive use of VRA by either party to a phone call constitutes an interruption in that communication in its broadest sense. It is an interruption because it is not a necessary and integral part of the communication (without which the communication itself could not take place).

Rather it is intrusive of and parasitic to that communication and thus it ‘interrupts’ that conversation in that it subverts the nature of it, namely the legitimate gathering of FACTUAL information by the authority, into something evidentially dubious. That is, subjective interpretation of a person’s honesty by means that is not admissible or challengeable in open court, which can then be used to suspend a person’s benefit.

in any event, isn't all this fancy software a waste of public money when councils and the DWP could achieve the same effect with .....

... a lasso of truth

An early proponent of the polygraph was the psychologist William Marston, who is also credited with creating Wonder Woman whose kit includes the lie-detecting lasso.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/superheroes/wonderwoman.shtml

'LB Lambeth has done a deal with Capita to use voice recognition software to catch out benefit cheats ...'

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/0CAD3A20BE92F2C480257354003BFA79?OpenDocument

Some Swedish researchers have published their views of the 'Lie Detector' systems as trialled by the DWP.

Charlatanry in forensic speech science: Anders Eriksson and Francesco Lacerda

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9673590/Eriksson-Lacerda-2007

According to the current issue of 'Private Eye' (6-19th March) these two researchers have been threatened with an action for libel/defamation by one of the manufacturers of these devices and the journal that published the paper has had to remove all references to the particular company from their website information.

Private Eye notes the issues concerning academic freedom of speech and then quotes Professor Lacerda as saying that " the biggest problem is the completely bizarre use that authorities and insurance companies in Britain make of these pseudo- detectors".

I am not aware of any appeals that hinge on evidence obtained from one of these gizmos and I don't think evidence obtained this way can be used in ordinary court cases in this country (I expect the lawyers out there will correct me if I am wrong) but I thought the action of the company concerned was interesting; either they have complete faith in the gizmo and can back it up in court or they are less than confident and trying to bluster their way out!

It is still available on the link above and well worth a read for those that haven't. It's easy to read and the arguments appear to be well-founded and well argued.

In summary, the authors argue that the technique has no evidential or scientific basis for validity. However, it has some reliability by way of a 'bogus pipeline effect'. What this means is that if someone is told that a lie-detector is being used (regardless of whether it is or isn't), poeple will be significantly more inclined to be honest. Therefore, it is not the technology itself that is effective, which is marketed, at a significant cost,on the basis of misquoted research and unverified claims; but rather the fear or anxiety caused to one who believes he is being tested that is effective in encouraging them to tell the truth. The authors cast a shadow over the morality of this approach.

Personally, I think they're right to do so. Legally, if it's tested, I reckon the courts will agree. After all, the 'bogus pipeline effect' is a bit like the placebo effect - it's illiciting a known response based on a false-belief. As far as I know, despite it's obvious effectivness, placebo treatments are illegal except in scientific studies and, if this is the case, I see no reason why VRA should be treated any differently.

And then, there are those who suffer from mental health problems that will feel genuinely threatened by the use of the technology and will end thier claims, thereby giving false credence to the statistics.

Look at the stats in today's new story. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the ability to discriminate the level of concealment by how dodgy the claiamnt comes across. Also it doesn't say anything about number.

Suppose that one in ten calls is identified as high risk, and one in three high risk calls proves to be concealing something. Nine out of ten cases are identified as low risk and one in five low risk cases is concealing something.

Then out of 100 cases, you have three instances of concealment form high risk cases, and 18 from low risk cases.

Excuse me?

The numbers matter very much here. In particular, we need to know the false negative rate, the false positive rate and the true background rate.

If the true background rate of dodgy claims is low, then any substantial false positive rate has nasty implications for innocent claimants.

The trouble, of course, is that the government does not want to talk about the true background rate, and the industry prefers to ignore the embarrassing question of false positives.

For a good article on the difficulties caused by false positives in such 'tests' read the Guardian's Ben Goldacre

http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/datamining-would-be-lovely-if-it-worked/

Basically, even if the test works then number of false positives will start to swamp the true positives.

David

From Goldacre's article:
"... even with the most brilliantly accurate test imaginable, your risk of false positives increases to unworkably high levels, as the outcome you are trying predict becomes rarer in the population you are examining."

Exactly. That is why we need an independent measure of the background rate.

I have hopes of the next administration but five...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/7938447.stm

interesting reading

I was waitching Jeremy Kyle the other week (someone has to).. and if you take coke.. not the drink beforehand - the test comes up inconclusive..

Maybe thats the answer...