Thatcher-era ICL mainframe fingered for failure to pay out over £1bn in UK pensions
- Reference: 1632317829
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/22/icl_mainframe_uk_pension_errors/
- Source link:
In a [1]report published today , the NAO said that contributing to systematic errors were processes which relied on systems with "limited automation" and required "the use of multiple systems and interpretation of complex rules."
"Where caseworkers identify that future action may be needed on a claim they must manually set a prompt on the IT system," the report said.
[2]
"Pension caseworkers must review information across at least three systems, understand which of the State Pension rules apply to each claim, and then accurately interpret them in order to assess a pensioner's eligibility. These rules are only fully understood by a small group of specialists."
[3]
[4]
The problem concerns rules under which married women could claim 60 per cent of their basic state pension based on their husband's record of contributions. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to pay around £1.05bn to pensioners affected, some of whom have battled for years to get the errors recognised. Staff time on the repayments is expected to mount to £25m and the job will not be finished before 2023.
The [5]BBC quoted one grandmother of four as saying she had spent two years battling for her money before she eventually received £7,334 in back payments for eight years of missed pensions.
[6]
A DWP spokesperson said: "We are fully committed to ensuring the historical errors that have been made by successive governments are corrected, and as this report acknowledges, we're dedicating significant resource to doing so. Anyone impacted will be contacted by us to ensure they receive all that they are owed.
"Since we became aware of this issue, we have introduced new quality control processes and improved training to help ensure this does not happen again."
The NAO report said that when working on a claim, DWP staff access different IT systems and manually copy information from one system to another to calculate the award. Up to four systems might be needed, including:
The National Insurance Record System (NICs) owned by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
The DWP's Pension Service Computer System, launched in 1988 and still used to manage the live State Pension caseload
The Customer Account Management system (CAM), launched in 2006 to support record management and history of the State Pension
The CAMlite system, also launched in 2006, for customers who live or have lived outside the UK
However, [7]an earlier NAO report from 2013 [PDF] described a "Pension Strategy Computer System," presumably the same as the aforementioned Pension Service Computer System (PSCS).
[8]British teachers' pensions set to be released from Capita's grasp after nearly 30 years
[9]Big data means big money for the UK government as £2bn tender mooted
[10]UK's Department for Work and Pensions continues to move off Oracle Enterprise Data Warehouse in pursuit of a single version of the truth
[11]Atos handed £1.5bn to run IT for UK government-founded pension trust Nest
The DWP introduced the PSCS in 1987 before the system was fully rolled out in July 1991. It was said to be one of the first Virtual Machine Environment (VME) mainframe computers to be installed by central government, supplied by ICL Limited, which was later [12]bought by Fujitsu.
Fujitsu said it would support VME until 2020. "After that date, organisations have a choice of moving to alternative solutions or further extending VME by using a cloud-based service that Fujitsu plans to make available as a managed service," the NAO said. "This will enable VME users to run their legacy applications on modern infrastructure."
[13]
According to [14]reports , that contract was extended for one year with a £29m Fujitsu deal.
Trade association [15]TechUK reported that the system had been re-platformed away from the mainframe environment in January 2021.
The Register has contacted the DWP for further details. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.nao.org.uk/report/investigation-into-underpayment-of-state-pension/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/servers&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YUtTN7g001OpQYpKI0BSqwAAAME&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/servers&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YUtTN7g001OpQYpKI0BSqwAAAME&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/servers&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YUtTN7g001OpQYpKI0BSqwAAAME&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58640197
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/servers&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YUtTN7g001OpQYpKI0BSqwAAAME&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/10183_DWP_The-Pension-Service-the-impact-of-legacy-ICT-case-study_final.pdf
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/24/teacher_pensions_capita/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/03/big_data_tender_two_billion/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/05/dwp_data_warehouse/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/10/atos_nest_contract/
[12] https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/31/business/fujitsu-to-buy-icl-stake.html
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/servers&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YUtTN7g001OpQYpKI0BSqwAAAME&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/dwp-awards-fujitsu-%C2%A329m-mainframe-support-one-year-contract-extension
[15] https://www.techuk.org/resource/dwp-complete-their-virtual-machine-environment-replacement-programme.html
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Underpaid but better off?
Thanks.
a free TV licence if you’re aged 75 or over : hasn't this been scrapped? I think everyone has to pay if they want to watch Bargain Hunt.
Re: Underpaid but better off?
Everyone pays if they watch Bargain Hunt.
Re: Underpaid but better off?
Not been scrapped they just introduced the condition that you must be on pension credits to get it.
Re: Underpaid but better off?
And in other completely missing the point of the story news, it is rumoured that the Red Dwarf crew are coming out of retirement after 3 million years in space. It is not known whether any claim a pension or are owed a refund ...
Future events for diary.
The multi year, over running, massively over budget project to tie these decades old systems together.
As provided by one of the well known incompetent outsourcing crews.
Prediction - project will be announced in the next year for delivery in 2025 with the first cockup story arriving in 2024.
Re: Future events for diary.
Given that the client is DWP this is a case where insourcing might have been worse.
Re: Future events for diary.
In or out the problem is it the the same shitnoozles are in charge
Fujitsu -- what else have they done?
Let me think. Fujitsu, where have I heard that name before? Ah, I remember, The Post Office.
Hmm.
Re: Fujitsu -- what else have they done?
Yes, at least the pensioners only ended up falsely empoverished, instead of falsely imprisoned.
Move along
My ICL 1902 is working just fine thank-you. Just bootstrap it using the hand-switches - they are in the middle of the thing that looks like a touring caravan. That will get you console access and you can mount the paper-tape reader. Bob's your uncle.
Re: Move along
"Bob's your uncle."
Not according to the Government person tracking database
Re: Bobs your uncle and the govt database.
Git off of me uncle dad.
Yer crushin’ ma smokes.
"These rules are only fully understood by a small group of specialists"
And have they laid him/her off yet?
Re: "These rules are only fully understood by a small group of specialists"
They would have laid them off but they died 10 years ago.
Re: "These rules are only fully understood by a small group of specialists"
They've all retired, now they're fighting to get the right pension but nobody in the DWP understands how it works.
It doesn't sound much faster
The report said "batch was 50-60% quicker". Another project went from a batch window of 5 hours to 1 hour.
Assuming these were on the ICL hardware, modern systems should be much faster for example solid state disks.
Disk response times have dropped from > 10 ms down to 0.5 ms or less.
CPU's should be much faster.
Machines have so much more cache than before, most of the active data should be in cache.
Re: It doesn't sound much faster
Yes but you need to factor in 30 years of code bloat.
Re: It doesn't sound much faster
It is easy to batch quicker just lose a few records, lose them all and what did takes days is now instant!
Funny how the system only seemed to have faults that resulted in non-payment or under payment. It's a very convenient fault that doesn't result in overpayments.
Underpaid but better off?
If you do not have enough pension coming in the government tops it up with https://www.gov.uk/pension-credit
Pension Credit tops up if
Your weekly income to £177.10 if you’re single
Your joint weekly income to £270.30 if you have a partner.
You also need to have less than £10K savings. (If you have more than £10,000, every £500 over £10,000 counts as £1 income a week. For example, if you have £11,000 in savings, this counts as £2 income a week.) If you own your own home this does not count :)
Other help if you get Pension Credit
If you get Pension Credit you can also get other help, such as:
Housing Benefit if you rent the property you live in
Support for Mortgage Interest if you own the property you live in
Council Tax Reduction
a free TV licence if you’re aged 75 or over
help with NHS dental treatment, glasses and transport costs for hospital appointments
help with your heating costs