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29 Jun 2006 : Column 549W—continued

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply for the Chief Executive. As he is out of the country, I am responding on his behalf.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the key performance metrics are for measuring the success of the EDS contract with the Child Support Agency.

In August 2005, the Department realigned its IT contracts with Electronic Data Systems (EDS), including that covering the Child Support Reforms (CSR), into the Standard Services Business Allocation (SSBA). The realigned contract is intended to deliver industry standard services at market competitive prices to the Department as a whole including Child Support Agency.

Under the SSBA, EDS is required to meet contractual levels for live operational services across a full range of industry standard measures. The key criteria on which EDS' performance is measured in respect of CS2 (the principal IT system used by the CSA) are:

The level of system availability (where the current target is 99.2%, rising to 99.6% over time);

The level of desktop infrastructure availability (where the current target is 99.2%, rising to 99.4% over time);

Accuracy and timeliness of payments to parents with care (where the target is 100%).

The Department is entitled to financial remedies if these targets are not met. In addition, the Department can benchmark EDS services against external industry comparators to help achieve ongoing performance and value for money.

The general contract realignment included resolution of outstanding CSR contractual issues with EDS. As part of this agreement, EDS is required to deliver a staged programme of work to fix agreed defects on CS2. The Department is monitoring delivery of this programme to planned milestone dates and to agreed testing acceptance and implementation quality criteria. Once all the relevant services have been transformed, application reliability, which affects processing times, will also become a contractual service level.

Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will place in the Library the latest list of change requests made to EDS by the Child Support Agency. [77972]

Mr. Plaskitt: The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Hilary Reynolds:

In reply to your recent parliamentary question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive. As he is currently out of the country, I am responding on his behalf.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will place in the Library the latest list of change requests made to EDS by the Child Support Agency.

The following table shows the latest list of change requests made by the Child Support Agency.

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Change requests	Benefits
CR1 (chargeable defects)	This allows the business to prioritise and approve small IT fixes during the testing phase which are identified as chargeable, without delaying the current testing and delivery timescales.
Change Release 1.1 (Integration Test Project)	To ensure continuity of the development activity for Change Release 1.1 whilst business requirements are re-affirmed.
Management Information Improvement Project	This will supply management information for the key core process areas of the business to assist performance management.
Call Off Scans	This will allow the Agency to meet its legal requirement to maintain the accuracy of data on the CS2 system and also allow the business to obtain detailed case information.
HSBC Bank Files	This updates and changes the way bank files are handled between the Agency/Department and HSBC and creates an automatic link between the banking system and Agency systems.
Programme Launch	This will ensure that a defined and contracted programme of work is accepted, is jointly regarded as representing the best IT solution to support of the Agency’s change programme. In turn this will mean that relevant EDS resource can be effectively and efficiently managed and projects implemented.
Year- end scans on FMS	This will allow the analysis of Agency debt to support year- end accounting activities, the development of policy proposals and emerging plans.
Weeding and Archiving	This allows the Agency to maintain efficient weeding and archiving of data.
Data Management System Performance Changes	This will reduce the overall time of the Data Management System batch run, and thereby minimise impact on the online working day start time.
Notifications Survey - DWP (CSA)	This will improve clarity of client notifications.

I hope you find this response helpful.

Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many telephone calls to the Child Support Agency (a) were received, (b) received an engaged tone and (c) were disconnected during the interactive voice response process in the period April 2002 to May 2006. [77973]

Mr. Plaskitt: The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Hilary Reynolds:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Chief Executive. As he is currently out of the country, I am responding on his behalf.

29 Jun 2006 : Column 551W

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many telephone calls to the Child Support Agency (a) were received, (b) received an engaged tone, (c) were disconnected during the interactive voice response process in the period April 2002 to May 2006.

The latest information is contained in the table. Please note that point (c) has been interpreted as referring to the total number of calls abandoned (for example, by clients who do not have a National Insurance number to hand and hang up to go and find it before calling back) or lost during the automated part of the process.

Further information on the Agency’s telephony performance is available in Table 16 of the latest edition of the Agency’s
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Quarterly Summary of Statistics. A copy of this document is available in the House library, as well as on the internet, at http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/csa.asp.

The Agency has shown significant and sustained improvement in telephony performance. Specifically:

Average waiting times to answer calls from the queue improved in 2005/06 compared to 2004/05, from 2:29 minutes to 1:21 minutes for new system calls; and 0:56 seconds to 0:28 seconds for old system calls.

In 2005/06, 91% of the calls available in queues for Agency employees were answered. This is up from 84% in 2004/05.

I hope you find this helpful.

Telephony outcomes, 2002-03 to 2005-06
	April 2002- March 2003	April 2003- March 2004	April 2004- March 2005	April 2005- March 2006
Attempted client calls to both CS2 and CSCS numbers	4,145,000	6,051,000	5,738,000	5,352,000
Calls for which outcome not recorded	45,000	145,000	48,000	42,000
Calls for which outcome recorded	4,100,000	5,906,000	5,689,000	5,310,000
Of which:
Calls that received an engaged/busy tone	See note	498,000	126,000	50,000
Calls abandoned/lost during the IVR process.	528,000	362,000	320,000	317,000
Notes: 1. Data is presented for calls made regarding cases on the new system (CS2) and the old system (CSCS) combined. 2. “Attempted client calls” excludes calls attempted outside working hours. 3. “Calls for which outcome not recorded” are those that were received but for which, due to data problems, the eventual outcome was not recorded. The volume of such calls has decreased significantly in the last 3 years as management information systems have improved. 4. “Calls for which outcome recorded” are those which were received and for which there is management information to track the eventual outcome. 5. IVR denotes the automated touch tone part of the process where clients enter their details via the telephone key pad. Once callers have cleared this part of the process, they enter a queue to be answered by a CSA employee. Note that there is no IVR process on the old system. 6. Numbers are rounded to the nearest thousand. Components may not sum to totals due to rounding.

Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what policies are in place with regard to (a) migrating Child Support Agency cases on the old rules system to the new rules system and (b) migrating them back onto the old rules system. [77978]

Mr. Plaskitt: We have always said that we would not consider transferring the bulk of the old scheme cases onto the new scheme until the new scheme was working well.

Child support legislation allows an old scheme case to transfer to the new scheme where an old scheme case has prescribed links to a new scheme application.

There is no policy for converting cases back to the old scheme. But where a re-application for child support maintenance is made within 13 weeks of an old scheme application ceasing, “linking rules” will provide for the new application to be assessed under old scheme rules.

Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what total amount of outstanding debt is owed to parents with care via the Child Support Agency; and what proportion of this is deemed uncollectable. [77980]

Mr. Plaskitt: The administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.

Letter from Hilary Reynolds:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Support Agency, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply form the Chief Executive. As he is currently out of the country, I am responding on his behalf.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what total amount of outstanding debt is owed to parents with care via the Child Support Agency; and what proportion of this is deemed uncollectable.

The outstanding debt balance for 2004/05 is £3,252.75 million for both new scheme and old scheme cases, of which £1,984.42 million has been classified as probably uncollectable. This information is shown the table below.

2004-05	Debt Position (£ million)
Collectable	637.79
Possibly uncollectable	599.54
Deferred	31.00
Probably uncollectable	1984.42
Total	3252.75

I am unable to provide the outstanding debt amount owed to the parent with care as there is no differential applied to the outstanding debt balance between the Secretary of State and the parent with care.

This response is based on the position at the end of the financial year 2004/05. The 2005/06 figures are currently being audited by National Audit Office and will be published in the Agency's Annual Report and Accounts.

Definitions of Collectability of Debt

Collectable

Amount outstanding which the debt analysis exercise revealed is likely to be collected. This takes into account factors such as regular contact with the non-resident parent, where regular payments are being made or an arrears agreement has been set up.

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Possibly Uncollectable

Amounts outstanding which the debt analysis exercise revealed some uncertainty over whether it will be collected. The amounts are considered doubtful where, for example, payments have been infrequent or it has not been possible to establish an arrears agreement or impose a deduction of earning order.

Deferred Debt

Debt deferred by the Agency, provided non-resident parents meet certain conditions on payment of regular maintenance and the remaining debt outstanding.

Probably Uncollectable

Amount outstanding which the debt analysis exercise revealed is likely to be very difficult to collect due, for example, to the lack of contact with, or the personal circumstance of, the non-resident parent. In many of these cases the Agency has suspended recovery action until such time as the individual's circumstances change.

I hope you find this response helpful.

Mr. Frank Field: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people in prison have Child Support Agency maintenance liabilities. [79616]

Mr. Plaskitt [holding answer 22 June 2006]: The information requested is not available.

Jo Swinson: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the average time was which the Child Support Agency took for processing a change in circumstances applications in (a) 2001-02, (b) 2002-03, (c) 2003-04, (d) 2004-05 and (e) 2005-06. [81228]

Mr. Plaskitt: The information requested is not available.

Jo Swinson: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many variations to Child Support Agency payment schedules were granted on the grounds of (a) assets, (b) lifestyle inconsistent with income, (c) diversion of income and (d) income not taken into account purposes in (i) 2004-05 and (ii) 2005-06. [81229]

Mr. Plaskitt: The information requested is not available.

29 Jun 2006 : Column 554W

Child Support Agency (Scotland)

Ms Katy Clark: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people in Scotland have been transferred over to the new Child Support Agency system. [80166]

Mr. Plaskitt: The information requested is not available at the geographical level specified.

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