How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'
- Reference: 1747391054
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/05/16/universal_credit_commons_committee/
- Source link:
As Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the minister, often referred to by his initials IDS, was responsible for the early life of the project designed to replace six earlier benefits platforms and simplify the system.
While project costs increased by nearly £1 billion ($1.3 billion) and completion is more than ten years late, the achievements of the "single biggest digital program in the world" should not be played down, Duncan Smith told the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.
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That success was attributed to a major reset of the project – which originally began in 2010 – just three years in. That 2013 "reset" was meant to integrate security into the design of the online payment system and bring technology and process experts into the same room, "literally," said IDS.
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"They would sit opposite each other. When somebody within the DWP [Department for Work & Pensions] side or the digital engineers side hits a problem, you don't wait and email somebody; you write the problem on a Post-It note, you stick it on the board, and say, 'Here's my problem, give me a shout.'
"People would get their coffee; they would walk along and read the board. You'd go along and you go, 'Oh, wait a minute, I know how I can do that.' You've got this energy moving back and forwards as you design the system. There's not one bit doing software and another bit doing the job centers, they were absolutely together, and that helps speed the process up. It is how everybody does it now."
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When the program was reset, it first had to recruit a new digital team, breaking salary caps for civil servants in the process.
"It's an either or: you have to pay the people that have got the expertise or you just don't have the expertise," Duncan Smith said.
Perhaps, though, later successes do not excuse earlier shortcomings of the project. In November 2013, Parliament's spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, [5]noted [PDF] "a shocking absence of control over suppliers [largely HP, Accenture, IBM, and BT] with the Department neglecting to implement basic procedures for monitoring and authorizing expenditure." Initial estimates valued the write-offs for software that could not be used at £140 million ($186 million).
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Although the 2013 reset might have got the Universal Credit project back on track, it was not plain sailing from then on.
According to [7]a report [PDF] from UK spending watchdog the National Audit Office in 2024, the estimate of the total cost of implementing Universal Credit had risen to £2.9 billion ($3.9 billion). In 2010, the DWP set out to transfer 8 million households onto the system by 2017. It rolled out Universal Credit for new claims nationwide in 2018, while setting out plans to complete the transition by March 2022. In November 2022, the DWP updated this business case, and by March 2023, 2.2 million households were still receiving legacy benefits. In 2022-23, DWP paid £41.2 billion ($54.8 billion) in benefits through the new system.
Since DWP's business case in 2018, the expected cost of implementing Universal Credit has increased by £912 million ($1.2 billion) and the date of completion delayed by at least six years to 2028.
Such shortcomings should not overshadow Universal Credit's achievements, Duncan Smith told MPs. The recent pandemic was a good example.
"If you think about COVID, [Universal Credit] took on 1.5 million people in about two and a half weeks. You could not have done that with the legacy system; it would have crashed. They did it without ever having to have a face-to-face with anybody because they could do it online, and that was the point," he said.
Even the delays to the rollout could be explained as a result of an improved iterative process, where the design was adapted in response to early implementation.
"You roll it out to a small section and then wait and see what it teaches you about its failings and your misunderstanding of what their [benefits] claims would look like," he said. "That's the bit that's gone all the way through this right into the digital program in exactly the same way, and people say, 'Well, it took longer than you anticipated.' Yes, because we realized the mistake of almost every other program change that's taken place in technology in government – and often in the private sector – is that those [design] assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them and then you're going back to change something which doesn't have the flexibility to change."
[8]Tech suppliers asked to support single electronic health record across England
[9]Does UK's Online Safety Act cover misinformation? Well, that depends
[10]Fujitsu and its no public sector bids promises... what happened to them?
[11]£136M government grant saves troubled Post Office from suboptimal IT
The success and the approach of the Universal Credit program should provide an example that other government departments can learn from as they tackle their own digitization projects, he said.
"If I were the government, the reality is that I would immediately say there is one place we learn from this, and that is DWP. Nobody in the world had done a digital system as big as that. If you think about the scale of the money that department handles in just one week, it dwarfs banks anywhere you can think of," Duncan Smith claimed.
There is no lack of candidates among government tech projects that might benefit from a lesson or two. They include replacing the [12]NHS finance system , which processes around £170 billion ($226 billion) in health spending every year, and [13]the tax system , which processes £750 billion ($997 billion) of transactions annually, and [14]internal ERP systems across most Whitehall departments .
In that context, whether Duncan Smith's picture of Universal Credit's success is accurate may not matter. A failure to learn the lessons from Universal Credit would be the greater disaster. ®
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[5] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubacc/619/619.pdf
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aCdhH5tlUxf2v1Zuvy3glgAAAgs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/progress-in-implementing-universal-credit-report.pdf
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/13/uk_health_department_calls_for/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/30/does_online_safety_act_cover/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/28/fujitsu_promised_not_to_bid_uk_public_sector/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/25/136_million_government_grant_saves/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/11/nhs_finance_system_delayed/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/23/sap_ecc_hmrc/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/18/uk_shared_services_/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"
UBI is just massively expensive from the start. And the cost doesn't go down once you get a working system.
Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"
Speaking of assumptions:
As a left-ponder, I have to ask - what's Universal Credit?
Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"
It's the benefits system.
There used to be a benefit (I.e. money) for those unemployed, a different one for those disabled, a different one for those on low income, a different one those on sick leave etc.etc.
Universal credit is the one that is meant to replace the lot.
Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"
Ah, thanks. So it's the UK equivalent of rolling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment payments, and (sorta) COBRA into one. Which makes much more sense than separate systems.
Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"
Not exactly. We don't have medicare and medicade because it's covered by the NHS.
Social security benefits fall into a few categories.
Unemployment Benefit which was income support - Money while unemployed
Job Seekers Allowance which is now processed as UC - Money while unemployed based on tax contribution in last two years.
Sickness benefit which is now LCWRA (Limited Capability for Work and Work-related Activity) - This has two rates a lower and an upper based on medical condition.
Working tax credits or child tax credits - Money you get extra if you have children.
Housing benefit - Help with your rent.
All the above have now been factored into Universal credit so it's a single benefit but it's important to note as per the article that not everyone has moved to UC yet.
Council tax credit is now administered as a reduction applied by the councils themselves.
The other part of UC is it's link to the tax system. This means if you earn a low wage you can still be entitled to UC. This equates to 55p in the pound. For every pound you earn 55p is reduced from your UC. This is done in the same month and automatic.
Very rough example.
I earn 500
MY UC is 390 and my rent is 400 so my UC is 790
.55 * 500 = 275
Therefore UC payment is 790 - 275
In theory it sounds like a great system. However the problem with UC is it is rigid and there is no room for manouver. Systems says no then system says no. If I finish a job and get paid overtime I did a month late which happens a lot my UC will be reduced even though I didn't get any the previous month and I haven't worked in the current month. You can get sanctioned and your UC reduced at the whim of job centre staff and you can do nothing about it. I'm also not a fan of government funding low paying employers who put people on 16 hour contracts just to have maximum cover.
This is not exhaustive and just to give you a general idea of how it works. There may be mistakes and stuff I missed out but it gives you the general idea of the UC system in the UK.
Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"
Described here https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/benefits/universal-credit/universal-credit-an-introduction
Universal Credit is a British government benefit paid to people who are in need because low paid (including self employed and it isn't going well), looking for work, unable to work due to an illness or disability, or who have caring responsibilities. More caring than the government which invented it. It has several nasty traps to catch claimants out, or throw them out. Of course this is intended.
A billion quid extra on postits...
And and years late. And here I thought Agile was supposed to be quick. :-)
Re: A billion quid extra on postits...
I think agile really means you do a bit and then you test it on your target audience.
Utopia
Imagine all those workers sipping generic instant coffee and contemplating endless wall plastered with post it notes.
"I can do that!!!"
"I can do that tooo!!!"
"yay!!!"
Then high fives.
Then evening comes and there is already a stack of post it notes that got unstuck throughout.
Cleaners come in and pick sticky notes one by one.
"I can do that!!!"
"I can do that too!!!"
"yay!!!"
and bravely lick them and plaster them back on the wall where they think they fell from.
Irritable Dowel Syndrome
Not a great fan of IDS or the administrations he was part of or the Universal Credit system as it exists, but I don't think he's wrong about the project - finding experts and paying them what they are worth, fostering collaboration, and using phased releases to evaluate how the tools work in practice is the best way to go about work at this scale.
Is it obvious? Absolutely. It should be the least anyone does, but it seems like they've come out ahead of many large scale projects by doing the basics. I hope other departments do learn from it.
Re: Irritable Dowel Syndrome
I remember reading a story that by lunchtime on the first day we went into lockdown in 2020 - someone rang universal credit to claim and got the automated message - you are 95,000th in the queue!
And the system didn't fall over. As IDS says, in taking on 1.5 million extra claimants in 2 weeks. That is genuinely impressive.
I think there are a lot of faults with the way UC is designed, but I hope that in changing it - we don't dump the IT infrastructure or even the benefit structure. Just operate it a bit more generously.
Re: Irritable Dowel Syndrome
See, I just don't believe that, for a multitude of reasons. The main one being, who was caller 94,999 who heard that message and thought "yeah, I can hold...". Repeat that for callers above (say) 100.
What *is* impressive, is that someone designed it for scale, and didn't get challenged on why it was so expensive and why they were catering for numbers that were incredibly unlikely. One could equally argue, that it was an over-engineered solution in that case. I'd make the case that any system that didn't say "for caller n+, play message saying call back later and terminate the call" was over engineered (for some sensible value of n, based on how many call agents would be and the average call length. If there's 100 agents, 10 minutes per call, you're servicing 600 calls per hour, so n = 600. You'll piss people off more by having them wait for an hour on hold rather than saying "try again later"/engaged tone)
Re: Irritable Dowel Syndrome
Annihilator,
By impressive scale, I meant the taking on 1.5 million new claimants in two weeks. Without the whole system collapsing. The phone thing was just an anecdote I remember from the time. Perhaps on that morning, 1.4 million people went to their website, and the other 100,000 all tried the phones? They had no income, not a huge chance of finding another job, couldn't leave home, so what else were they going to do?
I'd also imagine the system has to be designed with a certain amount of spare capacity. It's unlikely to be designed with a once a few centuries pandemic in mind, but recessions tend to happen every ten years, and they often start with a bang - a significant event that causes confidence to collapse - and so there's got to be a significant burst capacity built into the system.
Billions? Years? Your Taxpayer Pound Sterling At Work!!
Agile Manifesto
===========
1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
...
3. Deliver working software frequently...
...
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
...
10. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.
===========
Which "customer" would that be? Sir Iain Duncan Smith?? Or a citizen receiving Universal Credit?? I think we should be told!!
Who defines "simplicity"? I think we should be told!!
.......so the project described by Sir Iain Duncan Smith is CLEARLY NOT AGILE.
Yes but
Ok so fair kudos where kudos is due, but why oh why do new claimants have to wait SIX WEEKS to get benefits? What are they supposed to live on if they’ve just come off a minimum wage job which has been proven (by Joseph Rowntree Foundation no less) as insufficient to live on. No wonder food banks have so many clients. At our local one, we get someone new at least once a day who asks where they can get food and how does the system work?
Re: Yes but
To be fair to Iain Duncan Smith, didn't he basically resign over this? A quick Google says it was specifically over cuts to disability benefits.
His design for UC was to be more generous - but of course this was fucked up by the Treasury - who seem to be the most malign force in British government. In that they're very good at cutting spending, but seem to also excel in doing it in ways that actually end up costing the government more money in the end.
I suspect that the delay in paying out is designed to save money. A few million people lose their job every year, and the vast majority have found a new one within a couple of weeks. The admin costs of being able to process everyone who loses their job, to then only pay them for a week or two and stop is going to be pretty huge. And most of those people will have enough savings to cope. So the Treasury view is probably that they'd rather save the huge amounts of money and not think about the much smaller number of cases where that completely fucks peoples' lives up.
Similarly UC, as originally designed would slowly wean you off it. For every £1 extra (take-home pay) you could earn, past the set threshold, you'd lose 25p of benefits. So doing a few more hours gives you a nice tangible reward - and it encourages the effort to find a new, slightly better paying job. But I think at one point that level was reduced to 60p, so you work an extra hour and don't even get to keep half of the money you earned - which is a real disincentive to work extra for much less reward.
Re: Yes but
the Treasury - who seem to be the most malign force in British government
I see your Treasury and raise you a Home Office
Re: Yes but
The Home Office have been crap for years. But they only fuck up their job. The Treasury interfere with every department, and fuck them all up.
Take an example from defence. We're building the Type 26 frigate at super-slow speed. This in order to save costs earlier in the program, i.e. spread the same cost out over 15 years rather than 10. Of course this means we're saving on interest payments, in that we'd have to borrow money earlier in the program, and pay it back with budget from later years. However with inflation in defence purchasing running higher than general inflation - some of that is cancelled out. But the final nail in the coffin of the stupidity is that in order to maintain ASW capability - we had to extend the lives of the old Type 23 frigates. Which have cost something like £40-£60 million per ship. So we're spending 10% of the cost of a brand spanking new Type 26 to keep an older, less effective warship crawling along way past its design-life - in order to avoid a couple of million in interest costs.
Worse, the Type 23 has higher crew requirements. Plus being old, it probably costs twice as much to run. It's completely insane.
Re: Yes but
why do new claimants have to wait SIX WEEKS to get benefits?
It sounds like something designed by a middle class, paid monthly, worker with a healthy bank balance. A six weeks wait would not mean having to tighten their belt.
They would not understand the problems of the [1]one in 10 who have no savings .
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgv6z5pr92o
Re: Yes but
I remember hearing one politician being interviewed about the delays in receiving benefits, and without irony, he cheerfully said "They don't have to worry - it will be backdated".
I bet that was a great relief to those awaiting benefits. All they needed to do was get Jeeves to write them out a cheque for cash from Pater's bank, and they'd be fine.
Success
I wish my projects were deemed successful if they were massively over budget and that late.
Re: Success
You just need to use post it notes!
Post-Its FTW
Whenever we do refreshes, or post M&A work, or other large scale IT interventions, we try to grab a room / office, and put a post it pad and instructions outside the room.
Instructions along the lines of "Write down your name, phone number, problem and where we can find you". What we then do is every time one of our IT guys goes in or out they (a) pick one to fix and (b) reshuffle the others by priority.
It gives the users a clear view of why we're busy, what we're aware of, what we're working on. They can also re-prioritise. It builds engagement and trust and has worked well for us. I learned this from an Aussie IT manager...
>>> "As Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the minister, often referred to by his initials IDS, was responsible for the early life of the project designed to replace six earlier benefits platforms and simplify the system." <<<
I know someone who is getting ESA and PIP. From July, half his ESA is moving to UC, meaning he will then be getting ESA, PIP. and UC.
Make that make sense.
So he's patting himself on the back for something that should have happened from day one and would have saved billions?
"assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"
Err...mmm. I guess the hiding you get from those same humans in return will put you right there.
The vast sums expended on these behemoth projects that are almost preordained to fail really does make one wonder whether the UBI advocates aren't too far off the money.