Universal Credit Software Failure

MPs have woken up to the failure of the government to develop appropriate software for universal credit.  They are particularly concerned about fraud, but I am not sure that the government's software will actuually work at the most basic level.

When we were designing the Council Tax Support scheme for Brent, I was advised that the timetable was extremely tight.  One reason for this was the need to design and test the software.  We passed Brent's CTS scheme at Full Council on 10 December last year, and the first bills went out by 10 March.  This much time was needed to run data through the system to make sure that there were no mistakes in the tax demands people got.  It also affected the design of the scheme, since adding elements not prefigured in the existing software would delay the process by taking longer to design.

However our CTS system uses a far smaller database, with many fewer variables than any Universal Credit software is likely to use.  We were also making a simpler change in going from an old Council Tax Benefit scheme to the redesigned scheme.

I have heard anecdotes that the universal credit software is still not even at the test stage, and that administrators may have to use a paper system.  This could lead to:

• Overpayment, which would be very hard to claw back from people with limited financial reserves
• Underpayment, leading to greater hardship
• Fraud, which may not be easily detectable
• People being hit by multiple cuts because they fall into several categories that what David Cameron calls "the smart people in Whitehall" have failed to predict.

I am not sure that ministers have even grasped the sheer administrative difficulty of implementing their policies.