Department for Work and Pensions: 2012-13 Accounts: Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
This National Audit Office (NAO) report reiterates the earlier NAO report “Universal Credit: early progress” published in September 2013.
The earlier report commented on the problems the Department had faced indeveloping and implementing Universal Credit, and on the IT problems in particular. In that report, the Comptroller and Auditor General concluded that at this early stage of the Universal Credit programme the Department had not achieved value for money.
This new report does not change the view of the Comptroller and Auditor General. It has been prepared to draw Parliament's attention to the implications for the use of public funds of the decisions made on the use of the Universal Credit IT assets.
"I note that in November 2013 the Ministerial Oversight Group approved:
- Investment and recurrent costs for the digital delivery solution of between £25 and £32 million up to November 2014. The Department intends this will develop a core Universal Credit service, which will initially be trialled for 100 claimant households. To extend this to further numbers, and to scale it for national roll-out, will cost considerably more; and
- Further investment in the existing IT functionality, at an expected cost of between £37 and £58 million. The Department considers it important to continue to invest and run the existing infrastructure alongside the development of the new digital platform in order to derive learning and knowledge, and to better de-risk the overall programme.
16. These are considerable sums that the Department is proposing to invest, in a programme where there are significant levels of technical, cost and timetable uncertainty. I reiterate both the conclusion and recommendations from my report in September. The Department has to date not achieved value for the money it has incurred in the development of Universal Credit, and to do so in future it will need to learn the lessons of past failures and:
- Properly commission and manage IT development;
- Exercise effective financial control over the Universal Credit programme; and
- Set realistic expectations for the timescale for delivery."
You can view the NAO report at http://www.nao.org.uk/report/department-work-pensions-2012-13-accounts/