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A computer glitch at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs has left up to 100,000 low-income families without payments owed to them for their children. The Revenue should have deposited £250 into a child trust fund for the worse off families, to top up to the £250 voucher on offer to parents of all incomes. But a “programming error” at HMRC has delayed the payments, Kitty Ussher, the Treasury’s economic secretary said, from reaching between 65,000 and 100,000 households. “It is a technical thing due to the way the various computers at HMRC…talk to each other around people who are eligible for benefit payments,” she said. However a separate problem at HMRC “that we have not quite got to the bottom of” had also affected payments, the minister reportedly told the Commons Treasury committee. Fortunately for the families affected, Treasury officials vowed that parents will be “fully reimbursed,” with interest of 8% for late payments, the Financial Times reported. The pledge comes in the same week that the government also promised conditional compensation to the identity programme’s IT suppliers; IBM, EDS, Fujitsu, CSC and Thales. Payouts to the five firms, each of which were short-listed for programme contracts last week, would be forthcoming if they win work that is later abandoned by a Conservative government. The contractual arrangements entitle each IT contractor to lost profits, plus their bid and other costs, Bill Crothers, a director at the Identity and Passport Service told the FT. Yet the Conservative party attacked the compensation “guarantee,” normal in government IT contracts where there is a policy change, saying it was “improper and quite extraordinary.” David Davis, the shadow home secretary, added that he would be pressing ministers to explain under whose authority senior officials were making such a financial guarantee. If paid out, the sums for compensation would significantly add to the costs of biometric Britain, which the government has said is increasing overall; set up costs alone are up by 30%. The admission raises questions about the government’s ability to handle large-scale computer projects, such as the NHS IT programme, which is running at least fours years late. The National Audit Office, which confirmed the delay earlier this month, has this week spotlighted another government IT blunder, this time at the Department for Transport. The department had hoped updating its computer systems would save £112m by aligning human resources, payroll and finance across Whitehall and six agencies, at the cost of £35m. But the NAO pointed to poor implementation, changes to initial cost estimates and inadequate contract management as the reasons why the project will cost more than £120m and save just £40m. Concluding that the department will be £81m worse off, the NAO said it would only break-even by 2012-13 at the earliest, some seven years after the programme’s initiation. A survey of IT contractors published this week by JSA hints that a David Cameron-led government might be marginally better at delivering IT for the public sector. When asked whether the Tories would provide better opportunities for contractors and increase their public sector pay rates above inflation, 50.94% said they would, compared to 49.07% who said they wouldn’t. But IT contractors who actually work in the public sector don’t believe a Conservative government would be better overall: almost two-thirds said their real pay rates would fall from work being harder to come by. May 28, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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