APPENDIX 1
Memorandum submitted by the Public and
Commercial Services Union (PCS)
INTRODUCTION
PCS, the Public and Commercial Services Union,
represents the overwhelming majority of staff employed by the
Child Support Agency (CSA). We submitted evidence to the Select
Committee last year at the time that the Secretary of State had
announced the delay to the implementation of the Child Support
Reforms.
At that time PCS supported this decision as
we felt that it would have been disastrous for the Agency, its
staff and its customers to have proceeded without a fully operational
IT system. After an 11-month delay the Secretary of State eventually
decided to implement the new legislation for new customers of
the Agency from 3 March 2003.
Unfortunately, despite this delay, the IT system
is still not operating at anything like full strength. This is
causing significant problems for staff and customers alike.
How well is the Agency coping with the new scheme?
The introduction of any new piece of legislation,
combined with the introduction of a completely new IT system,
would expect to face teething problems and difficulties in establishing
a steady state of operations. However, the performance of CSA
since 3 March has been extremely poor.
The basic problem is that the IT system has
not bedded in at all and is effectively preventing CSA staff from
performing their job properly. This is perhaps best summed up
by the most recent performance statistics that we have seen. These
show that since 3 March CSA has had a total intake of approximately
60,000 cases to process on the new legislation, using the new
IT system. Of these, less than 100 cases have resulted in the
Parent with Care receiving at least one child maintenance payment.
The problems associated with the new IT system
are many and complicated. Some of the worst problems are as follows:
— System availability has not been
high enough. This means that the IT system has not been available
for much of the working day. This prevents staff processing any
cases at all, as all work has to be done using the new IT system.
— The IT system is very slow. This
results in very long delays (hours rather than minutes at times)
as staff try to move between screens. This in turn effects how
quickly a case can be dealt with.
— The IT has a tendency to "hide"
cases from staff dealing with them. Staff can be in the middle
of processing a case when it simply disappears from the screen
with no indication where it has gone. These incidents are raised
with the IT support teams but it can take weeks for the cases
to reappear.
— The electronic interface with Jobcentre
Plus has not operated properly. Far fewer cases than predicted
have come across the interface leading to a marked reduction in
the Agency's average weekly intake. Unless there has been a sharp
reduction in lone parents having babies or in couples separating,
these cases are out there somewhere but are not being referred
to CSA. At some point they will have to be dealt with.
— Many of the cases that actually do
make it across the Jobcentre Plus interface cannot be actioned
for a variety of technical reasons. This has the cumulative effect
of greatly reducing the number of cases that staff have available
to them to action and is delaying the progress of these cases
towards maintenance calculation and establishing compliance.
The new telephony system that was introduced
simultaneously with the new IT has failed to work as planned.
Many staff cannot use it for a variety of technical reasons. This
has resulted in many in-bound calls from customers being sent
to a limited number of extensions. This leads to engaged tones
being heard or the call being sent to the wrong member of staff.
This in turn leads to the caller having their call diverted around
the agency until, if they are lucky, they get to speak to the
correct member of staff.
— The IT system has so far failed to
provide reliable electronic management information. This has resulted
in staff having to produce management information clerically.
An indication of the crisis in CSA is that managers are insisting
that these clerical returns have to be produced on a daily basis
by 9.30 am.
— The IT seems incapable of allowing
staff the correct levels of access to the system. This results,
for example, in non-managers being given the system access profile
appropriate to a manager or to staff in one office being given
access to cases held in another office.
These problems, taken as a whole, are very serious.
Especially when you consider that EDS, the IT provider, were allowed
an extra 11 months to get the faults out of the system before
go-live. This does not appear to have happened. As a result an
important strand of the Government's welfare modernisation programme
is at risk of being seriously undermined. It is PCS' view that
serious questions need to be asked about their future involvement
in public sector IT projects as a result.
How well is the system interacting with the old
system?
The Secretary of State has consistently avoided
declaring when existing CSA customers would be migrated onto the
new IT system and then have their cases converted to the new legislation.
For a long time CSA was planning on the assumption that the migration
of existing cases on to the new scheme would begin in Summer 2003,
with conversion to the new legislation to be completed by April
next year.
But the CSA's Chief Executive told staff in
May that this was no longer the working assumption and, indeed,
the bulk migration of cases onto the new IT system has not yet
begun. Now there is no timescale by when existing clients will
begin to benefit from the new legislation.
This results in existing customers facing an
even longer delay in having their case converted to the new legislation
and increased uncertainty over their future finances. This in
turn lengthens the period that CSA has to operate two IT systems
and two sets of rules in tandem, but more importantly delays the
anticipated benefits of the reforms such as easier calculations
and quicker payments to children.
IMPACT ON
CUSTOMERS
To date the impact has been largely hidden from
most CSA's customers. This is because the vast majority of customers
are still on the old scheme and the old IT system. Their principal
problem is that they have no idea when they can expect to be assessed
under the new rules.
Ministers have always said that they would not
declare when existing customers would be moved onto the new scheme
until they were confident that the new scheme was working satisfactorily.
It seems inconceivable that this decision can be delayed much
longer, as the pressure from customers will inevitably increase.
But at present the new system is not working properly and shows
little sign of improvement.
This uncertainty also puts staff in a difficult
situation. They are the ones who have to explain to customers
that there is no date by when their cases will be moved over.
As time goes by this is becoming an increasingly difficult line
to maintain and increases the pressure on frontline staff.
It is the new customers of CSA who are being
effected most. Tens of thousands of cases have been stockpiled
and had no action taken on them at all. In many of these, the
cases have not even been registered on the system. These cases
are already suffering lengthy delays in maintenance calculations
being processed and to the flow through of money to children.
Those new customers who are having their cases
dealt with on the new system are suffering from the impact of
the IT and telephony problems mentioned above, as staff struggle
to process their application with inadequate IT support.
PCS remains concerned that, as backlogs of work
grow and the defects in the new IT system impact on productivity,
customer reaction and complaints will become more pronounced.
It is a common assumption amongst CSA staff that it is only a
matter of time before this situation in CSA begins to attract
wider publicity. Publicity that is unlikely to be beneficial or
positive for our members.
The insistence on the part of Agency managers
to increase the number of maintenance calculations on new system
cases has led to the radical decision not to check the accuracy
of any cases until after the calculation has been done and the
decision passed to the customer. This can only lead to a fall
in the rates of accuracy. On old rules cases, checking a case
before an assessment was made was a tried and tested method of
ensuring the Agency met its accuracy targets. However, the drive
for quantity seems to have pushed quality to the back of the queue.
IMPACT ON
STAFF
CSA staff are very keen to see the Child Support
Reforms work. They realise this is in everyone's interests, not
least their own. But the problems for staff on the New Client
Teams dealing with new cases are becoming so acute that they are
rapidly losing confidence in the whole reform process. Sickness
levels remain very high and CSA continues to have significantly
higher staff wastage rates than the rest of the Department for
Work and Pensions.
CSA staff are having to bear the brunt of the
new scheme's problems. The effect on staff morale of having to
endure the inadequate IT system is huge. Staff at all levels are
being placed under intolerable pressure. Demands are made to hit
ever-higher targets with deficient equipment. Priorities are changed
constantly and there has been an unwelcome trend for senior management
to blame the performance of their frontline staff for the Agency's
problems in delivering the reforms.
It is most definitely the view of PCS that it
is not the fault of the Agency's frontline staff that CSA has
got such serious problems. The same staff have, year on year,
improved the Agency's performance and ensured increasing compliance
before the new system came in.
The fact is that the vast majority of CSA staff
had no say in the design of the Agency's new computer system let
alone in building it. But it is clear to all CSA staff that it
is the computer system that is the principal cause of the recent
problems. It cannot be the fault of those staff if that system
now does not work properly. The view of many of our members is
that they are being asked to operate the new IT system with one
arm tied behind their back.
Problems are compounded by the loss of any case
ownership for individual caseworkers. The new system is designed
so that cases are handled by several different caseworkers as
the case is progressed. Staff therefore find it harder to build
up any rapport with customers and are constantly having to familiarise
themselves with new cases, only for that case to be moved by the
IT system to another caseworker just as they were beginning to
get to grips with it.
Staff were promised that the new system would
finally relieve them of having to work with inadequate IT and
poor legislation. The legislation is undoubtedly improved but
the new IT system is not yet working as it should. Indeed, in
the view of many staff, it is appreciably worse, than the old,
much-derided IT system. The general consensus is that the job
in the frontline of CSA has got harder and more demanding since
the new system went live and that the promises of a more satisfying
job have turned out to be empty.
On top of all this, staff morale has been badly
hit by the decision to reduce staffing levels in CSA by a third
over three years. The plan is to cut CSA staff from 12,000 now
to 8,000 by March 2006. A reduction in staffing was always expected
as part of the business case for the whole CSA reform project.
But the scale of these cuts has taken staff by surprise.
The fact that there was an eleven-month delay
in introducing the reforms has not led to an equivalent delay
in the expected efficiency savings and staffing reductions. As
a result, in the 2003-04 year, a staffing cut of 12% has been
imposed. This would be bad news for staff at the best of times,
but given the current problems affecting CSA it is too much for
staff to bear. The inevitable result, already manifesting itself,
will be greater levels of pressure and stress and consequentially
lower levels of performance. It is worth remembering that most
staff in CSA are paid less than £13,000 per year. There is
only so much that people will put up with for that level of reward.
Even Agency management will admit that CSA has
far more work to do if the new scheme is to be extended successfully
to existing customers. But to try and do this with less staff
and inadequate IT is a recipe for disaster. PCS is strongly advocating
that the staffing reductions are cancelled until, at the very
least, there is clear evidence that tangible improvements in performance
have materialised, that real signs of efficiency savings are apparent
and that all existing customers have been successfully converted
to the new scheme.
CONCLUSION
It is the view of PCS that the Child Support
Reforms are in serious difficulties. After just three and a half
months it may be too early to be sure how serious these difficulties
are. But the fact is that PCS members are contacting their Union
constantly to complain about the pressures and stresses of implementing
these reforms.
It appears evident to us that the primary cause
of these difficulties has been the inadequate support for staff
provided by the new IT system. The taxpayer does not appear to
be getting the value for money on its investment that would normally
be expected. We were promised a simple, state of the art IT system.
Sadly that has not materialised as yet.
There can be no doubt that serious problems
are emerging the longer that the new system is operating. These
include increasing backlogs of work and an apparently indefinite
delay in the decision to convert existing clients to the new scheme.
In turn customer service is affected with the inherent risks of
negative publicity, more complaints, and even heavier MP's postbags.
PCS is very fearful that CSA does not lurch
back to the chaos of its early years. But to many staff that were
around at that time, similar danger signals are present again
now.
Through all this, CSA staff, our members, are
struggling to keep the Agency afloat. The pressure they are under
at present is totally unacceptable. There is a real fear that
this bad situation could get even worse.
20 June 2003
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