Universal Credit: early progress
This National Audit Office (NAO) report compares the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) progress in implementing Universal Credit (UC) against its plans, and reviews how DWP managed the programme so far.
This report considers the Department’s:
- aims for Universal Credit;
- progress against plans; and
- programme management.
The report is very critical of DWP’s progress and management of the roll out of UC.
Progress against plans
- The Government ‘reset’ was forced to do a 13-week ‘reset’ of UC between February and May 2013 because the Major Projects Authority expressed serious concerns about the Department having no detailed ‘blueprint’ and transition.
- DWP pilots have been narrower in scope than originally planned.
- DWP has delayed rolling out Universal Credit nationally.
- DWP does not yet know to what extent its new IT systems will support national roll-out of UC, despite spending £303 million on IT development.
- DWP is currently reassessing what it must do to roll-out Universal Credit to claimants.
- It is unlikely that Universal Credit will be as simple or cheap to administer as originally intended.
Programme management
- The report suggests the DWP timetable for setting up the UC programme were overly ambitious.
- DWP tried to use an ‘agile’ approach to develop its IT and policy processes, despite having no past experience of using this method. This caused problems. The DWP is now using a combination of both agile and traditional approaches to IT programme management.
- The lack of a clear blueprint has meant that, by mid-2012, the DWP could not agree what security it needed to protect claimant transactions and was unclear about how Universal Credit would integrate with other programmes. These concerns culminated, in October 2012, in the Cabinet Office rejecting the Department’s proposed IT hardware and networks
- The report identifies weaknesses in management, inadequate measures of progress, lack of transparency and challenge of UC teams, inadequate financial control over supplier spending and ineffective departmental oversight.
- From mid-2012, the underlying concerns about how Universal Credit would work meant that the Department could not address recommendations from assurance reviews and failed to fully implement two-thirds of the recommendations made by internal audit.
- By late 2012, the Department had largely stopped developing systems for national roll-out and concentrated its efforts on preparing short-term solutions for the pathfinder.
- Since mid-2012, the Department has experienced high turnover in the senior leadership of Universal Credit. The programme has had five different senior responsible owners since mid-2012.
Conclusion on value for money
- At this early stage of the Universal Credit programme the Department has not achieved value for money for the reasons listed above.
- The report suggests “it is still entirely feasible that it goes on to achieve considerable benefits for society”. However to do so DWP will need to learn from its early mistakes.
Recommendations
DWP will need to show that it has done the following:
- Produced a realistic plan with clear programme objectives, linked to policy design and service requirements.
- Used a management approach that allows policy experts, operational teams and systems developers to work together.
- Established effective governance processes and structures.
- Tightened its financial management and control over spending.
- Reassessed its existing programmes and capabilities in light of the experience on Universal Credit.
You can view the full report and executive summary at http://www.nao.org.uk/report/universal-credit-early-progress/
The DWP response to the findings of the NAO report is at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/response-to-the-nao-report-universal-credit-early-progress