Disastrous universal credit IT system hangs in balance as Iain Duncan Smith quits

Op-ed: Ex-minister, who repeatedly hit "reset" on chaotic omni-dole project, backs out.

Read the whole story

 

[peterford]

Just a reminder that you tend not to hear about IT projects that work well - and those that have teething problems often settle down to become things that people take for granted.

Lets not use this to smear everything eh?

 

[peterford]

gbjbaanb[/url]":14ds4w0a]
Yes it should be simple to implement, feed a bunch of data from different departments, aggregate them, and run an algorithm over it to work out how much you get.

But then, rather than give it to me to write, they give it to consultancies who have 1 or 2 good people and a huge number of outsourced (ie cheapest) "IT" workers and contractors who get paid by the day.

I've worked on such things, it was hell attempting to do good work in the face of so much incompetence.

I don't often criticise someone I don't know, but based on this comment, you are utterly ignorant on this subject.

Government systems- especially those like universal credit are rarely technically complicated. The problem is that they translate law into code and this is incredibly complicated. Law makers don't think through every possible outcome, but creating these systems means you have to. This is where most delay comes from.

If you think you can translate huge areas of benefit law to code then you are either a god like genius or a chancer. The rest of your comment leads me to one of these.

No, I do not work on universal credit.

 

[peterford]

gbjbaanb[/url]":1acdnbqk]

peterford[/url]":1acdnbqk]

gbjbaanb[/url]":1acdnbqk]
Yes it should be simple to implement, feed a bunch of data from different departments, aggregate them, and run an algorithm over it to work out how much you get.

But then, rather than give it to me to write, they give it to consultancies who have 1 or 2 good people and a huge number of outsourced (ie cheapest) "IT" workers and contractors who get paid by the day.

I've worked on such things, it was hell attempting to do good work in the face of so much incompetence.

I don't often criticise someone I don't know, but based on this comment, you are utterly ignorant on this subject.

Government systems- especially those like universal credit are rarely technically complicated. The problem is that they translate law into code and this is incredibly complicated. Law makers don't think through every possible outcome, but creating these systems means you have to. This is where most delay comes from.

If you think you can translate huge areas of benefit law to code then you are either a god like genius or a chancer. The rest of your comment leads me to one of these.

No, I do not work on universal credit.

I worked on FiReControl, it was some, stuff we did for other customers and the only difference would have been a few fire-specific modules and national scale (which considering the number if calls fire gets compared to police or ambulance is less nationally than some constabularies). Add it was, the government and consultancy made it watt more complex than necessary, requirements that even conflicted with each other were common. They had 4 years working on those requirements....

Benefit law isn't impossibly complicated, it's all written down. There might be a lot of it, but that's only a problem of writing out algorithms that apply them.

I also worked on credit reference software. Taking inputs from so many different data feeds, writing out credit scores based on a lot of factors, that's not materially different from universal credit IMHO.

I think you need to check your ego.

You haven't disagreed with me at all - you say yourself the requirements conflict; so why is that the fault of "IT workers" and why should we "give it to [you]"?

Neither do I say that benefit law is impossibly complicated, I say incredibly complicated. There is a lot of it- that's the problem.

 

[peterford]

has[/url]":2yk5kk12]

peterford[/url]":2yk5kk12]

gbjbaanb[/url]":2yk5kk12]
Yes it should be simple to implement, feed a bunch of data from different departments, aggregate them, and run an algorithm over it to work out how much you get.

But then, rather than give it to me to write, they give it to consultancies who have 1 or 2 good people and a huge number of outsourced (ie cheapest) "IT" workers and contractors who get paid by the day.

I've worked on such things, it was hell attempting to do good work in the face of so much incompetence.

I don't often criticise someone I don't know, but based on this comment, you are utterly ignorant on this subject.

Government systems- especially those like universal credit are rarely technically complicated. The problem is that they translate law into code and this is incredibly complicated. Law makers don't think through every possible outcome, but creating these systems means you have to. This is where most delay comes from.

Here's a radical idea: Ditch all the consultants and outsource drones, and allow the government department to assemble its own compact, focused problerm-solving team that combines law makers, administrators, and developers into a single heterogeneous group that works in-house as a single unit to learn and understand the problem space and build the tools to serve it better.

Nothing is more utterly useless and less likely to yield a valid solution than programmers who only know how to program, managers who only know how to manage, and consultants who only know how to put zeros on the end of every invoice. If a programmer can't be arsed to learn about law or a lawyer can't describe how it works to non-lawyers, replace them with those that do. And don't be afraid to pay top dollar to secure the right people, because it will still work out infinitely cheaper than these endlessly repeating too-vast-and-ignorant-ever-to-succeed boondoggles that serve solely to inflate the usual private-sector suspects on the taxpayer dime with little but excuses in return.

That's actually what the UK government is trying to do in many cases. The trouble comes that because of the history they don't currently have huge experience or capacity. Learning quickly though, and the more modern , flexible technologies are helping them.