Government scraps £140m IT system
/v3-uk/news/1953546/government-scraps-gbp140m-it
06 Sep 2006, Andrew Charlesworth , V3
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has quietly shelved a £140m IT system originally designed to integrate the payment of a range of benefits.
The Benefits Processing Replacement Programme (BPRP) was announced three years ago with a brief to save £60m a year by making the benefits payment process more joined up.
The project was doomed from January when the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA) was introduced, changing the original aims of the BPRP. However, parts of the BPRP system will be reused by the DWP for ESA processes.
Last month, vnunet.com's sister title Computing.co.uk reported that the DWP's debt management unit, responsible for recovering money owed to the government from benefit fraud or overpayments, had a backlog of more than half a million cases caused by software problems.
The DWP announced in July that the crisis-plagued Child Support Agency was closing following the failure of its £450m computer system to deal with the number of claims.
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Such disasters seem to occur frequently and are referred to many times leaving one confused as to the total effect. It would be a great service if a list of IT projects started under this government was published as regularly as the disaster articles with the gain or (more frequently)loss in each so that a true picture of the performance could be understood.
Posted by misceng, 06 Sep 2006