Child Support Agency 2004 IT Failure (Essay Sample)

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Child Support Agency (CSA) 2004 IT failure
Child Support Agency (CSA) IT failure is a public administration fraud that occurred in the UK in 2004 as a result of IT system failure, which accidentally overpaid 1.9 million people and underpaid 700,000. Furthermore, it also led £3.5 billion uncollected Child Support payments, a backlog of 239,000 cases, 500 undocumented bugs and 36000 new cases ‘stuck’ in the system. This problem was caused by poor management and giant Electronic Data System (EDS), which intruced a complex computer system for U.K.’s Child Support Agency (CSA) (House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee 6). Additionally, at the same time, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) restructured the agency and this led to the agency and the new IT system to be incompatible. As a result, irreversible problems occurred within the system, whereby, for a over a period of five years, the system has accidentally overpaid 1.9 million people and underpaid 700,000, 500 undocumented bugs. Additionally, there are £3.5 billion uncollected Child Support payments, 36000 new cases ‘stuck’ in the system, and a backlog of 239,000 cases (House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee 6).
Analysis of the facts
In 2006, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO), indicated that two thirds of the money collected by the CSA from absent parents to care for their children is lost in administration of failed computer system and poor management. Additionally, the report released indicated that for every $1 collected from parent, 75 pence is used to run the administration, therefore, leaving the taxpayers shortchanged (House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee 6).
However, the waist occurred after the Department for Work and Pension spent £539 million in reform, as well as the introduction of an IT system to revive the troubled agency. By 2006, the EDS has been paid money amounting to £152 million to replace the old system with a new system, which does not work either. When initiating the project in 2002, CSA told the House of Commons that it has learnt its lessons from the last IT bodge and would ensure that the current computer system would work efficiently. However, the 2006 report issued by the National Audit Office (NAO) indicates that CSA learned more from the second failure. Moreover, in the same year, the register issued a report indicating that money amounting to £ 120 million was used to fix the failing system, with more likely to be allocated when new reforms were put in place (Batty par. 4). Nine months after the system went live, a report by the NAO indicates that the stability and performance of the system was a problem, whereby, more than 600 manual workarounds were needed to fix the problems in the system.
The results indicate that either single parents get too little money, or absent parents end up paying too much money. The system is a failure because 61 percent of the cases are still handled using the old pre-2000 standards and 36,000 cases are regarded to have “stuck” in the computer. Furthermore, by 2006, there was a backlog of 333,000 cases, meaning one out of four cases since March 2003 has not been handled(Batty par. 6). Although CSA promised that it would not do another rush job, experts indicated that the schedule of the project was tight. Furthermore, although there was available evidence to show the project was headed for a crash, CSA conducted secret Gateway Reviews for preventing programs from crashing which led to the agency wasting more than £91 million.
Main cause of the system failure
The CSA IT system has been branded as one of the worst public administration scandal to happen to the modern era, after being revealed that the cost has risen up £ 1.1 billion (Batty, par. 9). The main cause of the problem came from the EDS introducing a large and complex IT system to the CSA while at the same time it was trying to restructure the agency. While introducing the IT system, the Department of Work and Pension decided to restructure the entire agency. However, the restructuring of the agency and the new software became incompatible, hence produced irreversible errors in the system. The problems of CSA IT failure cannot be blamed entirely on the complexity and incompatibility of the system, however, the lack of proper management also inflated the problem (Batty, par. 9).
A reported released by the national watchdog, the National Audit Office supports the ministerial statements that the agency is not fit for the purpose and its work will run down gradually. The reported was released in 2008 and indicated that there are 600 manual “workarounds,” and blamed both the agency and EDS. The report first indicates that there is no clarity of whatever the system was needed for because the staff did not follow the rules of the use of the technology. Furthermore, if before, the contract to develop the system, the agency knew that this is high risk IT plans because they were trying to reform an agency that was under achieving (Simons, par. 6).
Moreover, although the project was rated high risk and no intervention strategy that can guarantee success, the agency went ahead and signed the contract. Additionally, the “healthcheck” conducted by the Office of the Government Commerce indicated that the system was to go live with 52 critical problems, with 14 of them with no idea of how to fix them (Collins, par 5). Another reason blamed for the failure of the project is the complex rules which required the agency to follow. A series of reports produced by Computer Weekly showed difficulties that faced CSA IT system, which included staff entering false data, inadequate training and poor communication, problem in data migration, management s...