back to article Legacy IT to blame for UK's inflexible benefits system

The UK's chief finance minister, Rishi Sunak, has blamed legacy IT for his decision not to increase social security payments as inflation hits the highest rate in 30 years. According to reports, the Conservative politician in charge of The Treasury was prevented from raising some benefits because of aging systems at the …

  1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

    Interesting variant excuse

    "Computer says can't" rather than "computer says no".

    1. Version 1.0 Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Interesting variant excuse

      This is just a symptom that suggests that the IT system maintenance may have generated a regular income for years for a politicians friends company.

      1. Adrian 4

        Re: Interesting variant excuse

        What maintenance ?

        1. Glen 1

          Re: Interesting variant excuse

          Sorry, maintenance *contracts*

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Interesting variant excuse

        As soneone familiar with the system, I can state categorically that this is NOT the case.

        Everybody wants to get rid of it, everybody knows it's a pile of dingos kidneys. Nobody wants to keep this as a cash cow,

        One of the reasons that UC is coming in as nobody could port it, amend it, do anything to it apart from its once a year updates. I do recall it used to be twice a year but that was some time ago and I could be wrong.

        I was at another large company and we looked at starting again using UNIX and Oracle around 20+ years ago. However the requirements of incorporating all the benefit, tax and other rules that are contradictory, vague meant that we thought it would be a bottomless pit of misery and pain, so we decided to run away screaming with our pants on fire, and that was before we even got involved.

        Anonymous for obvious reasons :)

  2. CountCadaver Silver badge

    My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

    I know politicians lie, but Rishi Sunak's nose should be longer than a barge pole....Truth is that the DWP thinks anyone on welfare whether disabled, retired, mentally unwell, temporarily unemployed is a criminal intent on stealing "their" money. Aided by their friends in the American private insurance industry, (seriously look into the links betrween the DWP and private insurers and basically insurance companies weasealed their way into "assist" the DWP and pushed heavily for welfare cuts and punitive measures, all so they could up their policies sold backed by advertising about "protecting your family" andn making reference to welfare cuts (that they drove) )

    DWP act like the probation service or an inquisition rather than a social security agency, people are constantly harassed, harangued and judges decisions are frequently ignored. It wouldn't surprise me if they had a "benefits monkey" they placed on the desk of anyone who approved a claim, in the same way the immigration dept had an asylum monkey they put on the desk of anyone approving an asylum claim......

    Sunak et al have NO idea how the rest of us actually live, they complain about having to give social security rises while quaffing x hundred pound bottles of champagne, claiming meal expenses per day worth more than many people's social security payments for the week....sickening....

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

      Did you not notice the pandemic when UC claimants got an "uplift" but legacy benefit recipients didn't? Again, IT was said to be the source. And then there's the pension issue mentioned in the article.

      While I agree with your view of DWP, I can also buy that the legacy benefits system is inflexible.

      He could have still have done it for UC, of course, which seems able to cope. And perhaps he could have accelerated the switchover to UC. Not that either would be without a political cost.

      1. big_D Silver badge

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

        If it is a COBOL system, there should be no problem, you just need to write a small program that goes through the database and adds the relevant percentages.

        I worked on many data conversion projects, going from old systems to new systems in COBOL and that involved a lot of replacing one value with another.

        It just needs to check what type of benefit the record is, calculate the percentage increase and write that value into the corresponding field.

        It shouldn't take too long to knock up such a program and, if this is a general limitation of the old system, you could parameterise it, so that it has a look-up table, which can be manually updated, then run the program to update... A pain, but better than "it can't be done".

        1. Steven Raith

          Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

          You're assuming they didn't sack off the COBOL engineers and try to replace them with contractors versed in .Net and Ruby.

          Steven R

          1. Persona Silver badge

            Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

            Those COBOL programmers will have retired and be claiming their state and civil service pension by now.

            Firms are now paying £600 per day for COBOL contracts and finding it hard to get people. I'm wondering if there are enough capable retirees left to attract back to the workplace.

            1. rafff

              Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

              Firms are now paying £600 per day for COBOL contracts and finding it hard to get people. I'm wondering if there are enough capable retirees left to attract back to the workplace.

              As a retired programmer (inter alia Cobol) I was earning that much 15 years ago. Factor in inflation, tax, IR35 etc. and I'm not getting out of bed for that money.

            2. John G Imrie

              Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

              Perhaps it's time to brush off my City + Guilds in Cobol programming.

          2. big_D Silver badge

            Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

            Funnily enough, my first project out of college, in the late 80s, was to maintain an MS BASIC based corporate reporting system. It had been written by COBOL programmers and maintained by FORTRAN programmers...

            I don't think any of them ever opened a BASIC manual. Instead of For...Next loops, there were

            10 a=1

            20 ...

            30 ...

            40 a=a+1

            50 if a < 10 then go to 20

        2. GreyWolf

          Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

          Your very sensible suggestion has one major flaw.

          It assumes that there is anyone at the government department that understands the basics of IT.

          No. They got rid of all those more than 20 years ago. And have been spreading their legs and dropping their knickers for the suppliers ever since.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

          I have looked at it and I wouldn't touch it with anything.

          You have absolutely no idea how big and complicated it is. Nothing I have ever seen (short of the Denver Airport Baggage Handling system which became the Met Police 999 system) comes close.

          There are things in there like WW1 pensions for surviving widows. Yes, there are no more of them, but you have decades and decades of changes that have to be accomodated. It's one thing on top of another on top of another. Its like an archelogical dig. Look through the tax codes, the benefit changes over the last 90 years and then work out the implications of all the changes and the dates they need to be done for and you start to get a feeling of how big this is.

          Thats why UC was an easier option. Start again

    2. Danny 2

      Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

      Please expand on the "asylum monkey".

      I was blacklisted two decades ago so have 1001 anecdotes about DWP incompetence and abuse, and two or three contradictory examples. I'll spare you 1000 of them.

      I used to live with a DWP TEO, many of my family were similar or worse, so I knew their systems. Each time I'd sign on (for dole, not login) I'd either help them work their terminal or fix one of their job lottery puggies.

      For foreigners, a puggy is an evil gambling device like a video game in a pub or betting shop. JobCentre terminals were identical but if you played long enough then you won a job. And if you did'nt play you went hungry.

      WinNT pc under the hood. Kept on breaking down, leading to long queues and sometimes violence due to a lack of technicians qualified to open the case. "I'm an MCSE, let me through!"

      The DWP staff would sometimes ask me to fix multiple problems, and I'd decline. "The first one is free, the second one is £50 cash in hand - and don't tell the Dole". One time one of the managers agreed to that even though I'd just been joking. Paid me out of their pocket. Took an afternoon but worth it for the story.

      1. Test Man

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

        "The DWP staff would sometimes ask me to fix multiple problems, and I'd decline. "The first one is free, the second one is £50 cash in hand - and don't tell the Dole". One time one of the managers agreed to that even though I'd just been joking. Paid me out of their pocket. Took an afternoon but worth it for the story."

        This is the most amazing set of sentences out of an amazing story!

      2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

        https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/08/uk-border-agency-investigation-concerns

    3. Howard Sway Silver badge

      Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

      "the systems at the benefits agency could not support this"

      So you're seriously telling us that either a single column in a database table containing a payment amount, or possibly a hardcoded amount in a COBOL program cannot, in any way whatsoever, be updated? I would be demanding some kind of technical report explaining just exactly how such a simple commonplace task is supposedly "impossible", as every IT system I have ever encountered would have had some way of quickly making such a trivial change.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

        >So you're seriously telling us that either a single column in a database table containing a payment amount, or possibly a hardcoded amount in a COBOL program cannot, in any way whatsoever, be updated?

        You're assuming the system is digital. It is not. The critical information exchange the minister is complaining about is paper-based. There's a complex web of interdependent systems and agencies (DWP, HMRC, local authorities etc.) tied together with very legacy paper processes that take months to fully propagate changes, so there are only a handful of change windows a year.

        It was meant to be fixed decades ago but then UC took over and we've been waiting for that to make a difference for 10+ years.

      2. R Soul Silver badge

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

        So you're seriously telling us that either a single column in a database table containing a payment amount, or possibly a hardcoded amount in a COBOL program cannot, in any way whatsoever, be updated?

        How else do you think Fujistu, IBM, Serco, Crapita, etc make their billions from government IT contracts?

      3. nijam Silver badge

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

        > ...possibly a hardcoded amount in a COBOL program ...

        We're all quite fed up of being told how vital COBOL is, thank you.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Windows

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale - Easy System Fix

        I worked as a COBOL programmer for a company that built a core US State Unemployment Systems (40 years ago) and customized it for each state that hired us. Based on my experience, this is most likely a case of the system being designed to record a single yearly increase to the benefits. The data tables should already support multiple increases per year since they need to track the change down to the date it occurred. All that is lacking is the data entry screen to input it.

        This seems much more like a convenient excuse. Probably because they don't want to touch it after the last foul up or because they don't want to retrain the groups that have to work with paper documents (and these people were always our biggest problem - a lot harder to fix than the software). Or maybe just to save money which would go to those they consider deadbeats,

        1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

          Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale - Easy System Fix

          That was my thought - built when no-one thought there might be more than one rate change per year, and hence no way to manage it. I suspect that most fo the commentards on here with a "that's BS, all it needs is ..." have never worked on systems like this - huge, old, very large number of users and clients (so massive training requirements for even a simple change), and so high profile that there is zero chance of any hiccup going unpunished.

    4. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

      "judges decisions are frequently ignored"

      A few contempt proceedings and jail stays would put a dent in that

    5. Persona Silver badge

      Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

      I have scratched my head on why the Universal Credit roll out has taken so long. My guess is that the DWP has multiple departments that each "manage" a particular benefit. The managers of each department see it as their personal empire that needs to be heavily staffed to cope with the complexity and utterly opaque so what they do can't be amalgamated into another department. However as benefits interact the amount due is conditional on what other departments are paying so the whole process feeds back on itself. Changing anything is going to be hard and some people will be adversely affected, particularly if the benefit they were getting was incorrect.

      The only solution I can see would be to create a "Benefit Audit" team whose task is to check everyone is getting the right benefit. To enable that they would have to be given live access to all of the benefit defining criteria held on all of the departmental systems, and a feed of the benefits being paid. Achieving this would be an uphill struggle, but a necessary one. Phase one would be to model the full set of benefit rules, run everyone through it and examine the exceptions. If the exemption is due to the model they fix the model. If not a manageable number of the error cases is fed back to the relevant department. One would hope that the individual departments would address the errors so after a period of time phase two would kick in and the departments notified of errors would have a fixed time to respond and fix or disprove the error, otherwise the "Audit" team would apply a balancing payment to correct the error for the claimant. The net result of phase two is that claimants are getting paid the correct amounts and the Audit model has been tested with all the rules and all the claimants. Phase three would be to turn off the payment orders coming from the departments. Their role is now to collect, store and correct the benefit eligibility criteria and "perhaps" approve advances and exceptional payments. The legacy systems can then be replaced one by one with simple database update and a query tool applied to the central "Audit" system that explains what benefits are and are not being paid and the underlying reasoning based on the eligibility criteria.

      I suspect it would only work if you kept phases two and three secret otherwise that first hurdle of getting access to the individual departments data would be an impossible task.

      1. CountCadaver Silver badge

        Re: My BS-o-meter just shot off the scale

        Its taken so long as its an ill designed shit show, designed by the well heeled to punish those daring to need support. Its left people destituteas it assumes everyone has "last months salary" to tide them over for 5 weeks.

        Also blind to people paid 4 weekly, who some months get 2 pay cheques in a calendar month, UC then cuts their payments and leaves them short next month.....then again why would anyone expect different from a minister who was described by someone as "the thickest guardsman officer I ever met" and a dept beholden to Unum.....

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      That system is called "universal credit". The switchover is ongoing.

      1. BOFH in Training
        Facepalm

        Interesting.

        Article says significant number of people are still in the older system, implying that the new system is up and running and it's just a matter of transfering the data to the new system.

        Would have expected a DB dump from the old system to the new system, and both running concurrently for a while to make sure the new system works as expected before the old one gets retired.

        What are they doing if it's a multi year process to switch over? Manually entering DB records for every single person?

        1. Shez

          "What are they doing if it's a multi year process to switch over? Manually entering DB records for every single person?"

          Basically that, the claimant has to register a new claim on the new system (after being invited to do so whenever they've got the new system ready to handle that type of claim)

          1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

            "What are they doing if it's a multi year process to switch over? Manually entering DB records for every single person?"

            It's probably more like:

            track down the paper records for the person.

            Audit these for the last x years.

            Work out if they've ever made a mistake which means they have overpaid someone by any amount.

            If so, take them to court for the money the person almost certainly does not have (you don't get to have savings if you're trying to survive on benefits).

            THEN, enrol them on UC, possibly with a monthly deduction for anything they think the claimant might owe.

            Oh, and also, don't pay the claimant for 4 weeks, because old benefits were paid up front, and UC is paid in arrears, for the extremely patronising reason of "getting people used to being paid monthly like they have a job".

            If the government were just doing this to simplify the benefits system, it would have been completed years ago. Their real motives are to REDUCE the outgoing benefits, which they can do by slowly moving people across, and accounting for that 4 week gap with each person - it makes the monthly figures look better. Along with finding ways to "make mistakes" where people get dropped off the system, and finding reasons to stop paying people, in a "prove your muscular dystrophy hasn't magically got better" kind of way.

            Add to this the pork barrel politics that almost certainly exist with the "maintenance" of the old systems - I'm willing to bet you that there are several politicians with links to the companies that have contracts to "maintain" these, and this probably includes charging £50 a time to sign a bit of paper that entitles a claimant to £45.

            Never forget who the real scroungers are here - it's not those struggling to survive on a meagre pittance, it's those who are accumulating wealth from the system, and probably sending it offshore to a cosy tax haven somewhere.

            1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

              "getting people used to being paid monthly like they have a job"

              The last oodles of public sector IT jobs I've had were paid weekly. And the last two private sector ones as well.

              1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

                As are the insecure zero-hours gig-economy jobs people are getting forced into in short order, once they are on UC. The government don't care about helping people, but this sure does make the employment figures look great, even if those people don't actually get any hours to work in a given week.

            2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Oh, and also, don't pay the claimant for 4 weeks, because old benefits were paid up front, and UC is paid in arrears, for the extremely patronising reason of "getting people used to being paid monthly like they have a job".

              Just to add to the fun, UC is based on monthly income, so when people who get paid four-weekly receive two payments in a single calendar month their UC payment is reduced and the benefit often stopped altogether, requiring a fresh application at least once every year. As they say, the cruelty is the point.

        2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          "and both running concurrently for a while"

          Most likely result is many people being paid twice, spending the extra and ending up in court or minimal/zero future payments to repay when (if?) the double payments are spotted. The rest will get nothing because each of the parallel systems "assume" the other is making the payments and end up homeless because it takes so long to sort out.

          1. Danny 2

            Homeless and shivering and broke I found £500 in my bank account. I assumed it came from the sale of my house, but I spent it before I thought about it too much. No, the bank had increased my overdraft limit without telling me. They told me they had written to me, "But you know I am homeless, where did you write?"

            So now I was homeless and shivering and £500 in debt - and then the banking crisis hit and I was being charged exorbitant interest. Nearly all my dole went to the bank.You can claim dole even if you are homeless if you can prove you are applying for jobs, which is a bit hard in winter keeping paper dry, and not be tempted to burn it for heat.

            I was living on the outskirts of town because teenage boys are violent and immoral, but you don't want to live in a homeless hostel - even scarier. I had to walk 10 miles to and fro the jobcentre everyday through the snow to sign daily 'for my safety'. [Insert swear word.] Lost all my camping gear because of that mid-winter.

            Then my passport expired and the post office would no longer accept it as proof of identity, although even an expired passport is a legal document. So I requested the dole to make out my giros to a post office that knew me since childhood. Far longer work but doable. And they didn't change it for eight weeks, during which time my bank was charging £5 a day plus interest on my overdraft that I hadn't asked for. The dole promised to eventually pay off the debt they caused, and they didn't. I appealed to the top guy, the top guy lied. Try applying for any job if you don't have a bank account and your home address is a job centre.

            Like any good Briton I conacted BBC R4 MoneyBox who advised me to hand over my bank card to the bank and explain the situation. That was a thirty mile walk. So homeless, no bank account, no fault of mine, and a very angry return walk. I passed a dole centre and demanded to see my communications with them, which they refused before calling the cops on me for refusing to leave. Cops threatened to arrest me, "So, wait a moment, you are threatening to give me a warm bed with free food? Sign me up!" They broke their promise and left me homeless and hungry.

            There are cracks in the system you can fall down and cracks you are kicked down. I was registered homeless for five years with my council which didn't help me once, although in reality it was far longer because I travelled. I did a Freedom of Information request, 500 other people were registered homeless too, although in reality far more because they don't register you if you don't have provable local links. I have a flat now from a housing association that took pity on me, but I refuse to pay council tax. I also never give money to beggars, because I never did.

        3. SloppyJesse

          "What are they doing if it's a multi year process to switch over? Manually entering DB records for every single person?"

          From a systems point of view, yes. Universal Credit is a new benefit combining what were historically separate benefits - but it's not a 1:1 replacement for the swathe of benefits it replaces, so each claimant moving to UC has to go through the claim process again.

          There's also been resistance to moving onto it due to both issues in the new system causing claims to get messed up, and political decisions on how the system should work making switching over painful and potentially less generous to some groups.

          1. CountCadaver Silver badge

            Also because they realised UC is unable to handle "complex" claimants (read seriously disabled) to the extent the system has a block put on to stop them being moved over at the moment (I get the feeling that "leaving a small number on the .legacy system was felt to be the fairest way" will get aired, when in reality its because they realise UC cant handle it and will cost a fortune to modify

        4. Bill 21

          Money for old rope

          Consider the rules change twice a year with the budgets - three or four months to roll out the changes for these (on the legacy and shiny systems), then you're playing catchup with the grand unification for a little, then the next change hits. And the incentive for the companies doing the work would be to keep it going just like that.

        5. Warm Braw

          The old system and the new system actually provide different results. The reason the old system persists is that the new Universal Credit system is typically "less generous" (i.e. even meaner) and, consequently, existing claimants were allowed to retain their existing benefits until their circumstances changed.

          The new system was never specified to cope with legacy benefits and, indeed, the old system was never updated to accommodate the changes in benefits that had occurred since its inception. Even 20 years ago, a significant proportion of benefit calculations were being done by hand, overriding the default calculations of the computer.

          A sane government would have specified a benefits system wiith a set of parameters and restricted its policy announcements to variations in the parameters. A generous government would have ensured that the new system allowed existing claimants to be transferred without financial loss. However we have had a series of mean and insane governments who made policy without any real consideration of the implementation details and who do not even begin to understand the lives many of their citizens actually live.

          If only we could work out who voted for them.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        And has been in the process of cutting over since approximately 2013, with implementation costs very well north of £10Bn.

        When it comes to taxation, benefits and pensions, if you think you can solve the problem with a simple statement like "run it in parallel" or "simplify the system" then you don't understand the problem.

      3. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        The massive downside from the recipient point of view is that UC is designed to reduce claims and to make it as hard as possible to claim anything.

        Previously unlinked benefits suddenly become linked in UC even though the official narrative is that they are not. It's all down to the aim of reducing the payouts, not social support, not fairness, not inclusiveness and accessibility, just down to reducing payouts. That the usual kickbacks and trough feeders are embedded in it adds to the further aim - taking money from government and putting it into private corporate hands - actually delivering anything is a sideline.

        1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

          And meanwhile a company owned by a Tory peer makes £100m+ profits on PPE of such poor quality that it had to be landfilled. No bidding process, of course. You know things are bad when Tories are even more crooked than Labour was in Glasgow City Council.

    2. cchas

      The core systems are actually very well architected/designed - in the era when software engineering meant something before agility threw away architecting. (UC is only aimed at replacing a part of these so thats not the solution.)

      The issue is they are running a lot of very old cobol on machines that went out of life over a decade ago. HMG is paying fujitsu et al megabucks a year just to keep the hardware alive - (a modern midsize server would actually outperform these systems)

      However outsourcing meant that any expertise/IPR in these was transferred then lost - no-one actually understands the totality of what the systems actually do anymore. ( However their design means that they can easily handle additional uprating etc - the suggestion they can't is BS.)

      To those who say rewrite - yes thats what should be done - but first you have to work out what the systems actually do or do the analysis to say what you want them to do - that will take a while and cost a lot. (Even more if they follow the same agile folly that led to UC)

      HMG will not bite the bullet and commit to doing something as fundamental as this - there have been several hugely expensive attempts to migrate off the kit/auto translate the code/magic solutions etc - all failed because of the lack of understanding of the systems - how do you write test cases when you don't know what the systems do?

  4. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Remind Me...

    Which party has been in power for 27 of the last 40 years?

    1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: Remind Me...

      Correct answer: the Civil Service, for all 40 years. The Government you don't get to vote for.

      1. Korev Silver badge

        Re: Remind Me...

        Yes, Sir Humphrey

      2. CRConrad

        Sir Humphrey: Yes, Minister.

        That was cleverly disguised as a comedy, but actually a documentary.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sir Humphrey: Yes, Minister.

          But is not representative of "the civil service". I would not be in the least bit surprised to find some dinosaurs like that still around, but for the hundreds of thousands of us, in well over 200 departments, all trying to do a job to the best of our ability and enablement (sometimes there are things we'd like to do but the system won't allow it). And politician like to blame us for their f-ups - what we do is what the politicians direct that we do, our job is to implement the policies passed down regardless of the government in power and whether we agree or not.

          And the thanks for all we do ? While Rishi will presumably not refuse his significant pay increase on the basis that the independent review body said they deserve it, he (along with all the rest, past and present) have refused calls for an independent body to review our pay - and this year have set a ceiling on pay rises that is currently looking like being 1/3 of the inflation rate, following on from a year with no allowed increase, which itself has followed a decade of below inflation pay rises.

          Next time you read of some project failing, just remember that whichever department was responsible for it will have been staffed by those who are prepared to work for civil service pay rates which are generally well below industry rates. In many cases the section will have been short staffed, the best will have left for the private sector for much much more pay - and possibly gaps have been made up (at great expense) by contractors who really don't have our long term interests at heart. And then the ID10Ts will use the failings causes by politicians (of all brands) ineptitude over the years to "justify" privatising a department/function - of course, those contractors I mentioned ? They'll now be clued up on what's needed when they move to the private company now running the monopoly.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Sir Humphrey: Yes, Minister.

            I've just left local government after 18 years as a web developer specialising in digital accessibility, for very similar reasons.

            It's pretty likely my previous employer won't replace me and outsource the website, as it's highly unlikely anyone will be willing to work for the salary my job is advertised at (same as what I'd been earning).

  5. cantankerous swineherd

    24 carat bullshit

  6. tomgid

    First off, start doing away with a whole bunch of old Fujitsu, NTT software from the government systems. They're nightmare according to my friend working in the industry. Why do we employ them, paying a lavish amount, when the country they are from is being laughed at worldwide for using Fax machines to report the number of Covid patients in this day and age?

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-japan-fax-machine-online-hanko-a9501906.html

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Downvote because the company I work for (in France) places orders by fax. Well, it's an all singing all dancing photocopier, but the end result is burble-burble-screech.

      Why? Because a handwritten signature that was actually created by a human (as opposed to a copy paste scan) carries legal weight. It is a promise that their end of the order will be fulfilled (namely, the payment part). Emails are used for follow ups, but these don't have the weight to present orders. Modifications, delivery changes, sure. But not the original order.

      And before anybody says "order online?"...no, not if you're placing an order for six tonnes of flour, twelve tonnes of sugar, and big sachets equivalent to several thousand eggs. Oh, and maybe five or six hundred litres of milk. Yup, it's the world's biggest pancake! ;)

      1. tomgid

        Maybe yes for a significant contract but abs not when you're mainly dealing with numbers. Low productivity and human error. That's what you're paying for. Not that they're building Fax machines all over again here but usually Gov systems involve big data that comprise of number and string waiting to be processed and stored.

        If I were at position selecting vendors, I wouldn't entrust an Gov enterprise system to a entity that is not thought to be culturally compatible with envisioning/working on such a process. But of course it may be a problem beyond the issues at play right now.

      2. SloppyJesse

        > Yup, it's the world's biggest pancake! ;)

        You are Greg Wallace and I claim my £5

      3. Fred Dibnah

        Signatures

        Shirley a signature on a fax is a scan, not an original. Harder to forge over a straight scan or photo, with all the necessary faxy noise & wibbleness, but still a copy.

        IANAL but I thought emails in certain conditions can count as binding legal documents these days, in the UK anyway. That’s why I feel obliged to help that West African prince who wrote to me.

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      when they originally got the contract they were ICL - British - and despite being owned by a japanese company, they're _still_ ICL under the hood

      Quality British Software.

      Qualiity British Customer Service....

      Brought to you by the same people who produced Horizons

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        God know I don't go out of my way defend Fujitsu - I used to work for them and damn them on a weekly basis to this day - but this isn't one you can lay at their door. They supply and maintain VME, which is the operating system on which it runs and no more. The software which is being blamed was developed by the DHSS back in the day, then updated by Andersons before being shuffled off to EDS then HP to have its increasingly aged chin wiped. This one isn't down to Fujitsu.

        Horizon was produced by a different part of Fujitsu, one I am delighted I wasn't part of. I would defend those working on it who reported problems but condemn those who participated in the cover-up and ruined so many lives. While this was going on all Fujitsu staff were doing annual mandatory training on Business Ethics after a board member in Tokyo was imprisoned for dubious behaviour.

    3. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Yeah, the reason is right there in the URL. "Hanko".

      But of course, it's just easier to laugh at another culture, rather than understand it, isn't it?

      Ironically, there are a lot of similarities between British and Japanese culture, a good number of them negative, that spring largely from our shared history of being isolationist island nations. In many ways, though, what might look similar at first glance has quite different roots underneath.

      I'm willing to bet that their reasons for using fax machines for this purpose are not the reasons you think, and are culturally, not operationally, based.

  7. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    WTF?

    Wasn't Fujitsu

    involved in another government IT cockup that resulted in systems being unable to process payments/accounts properly and any difference being blamed on the users who were then fined/jailed for theft... before finally admitting they'd lied in evidence given to the court

    How do these people KEEP getting government IT work? (I'll include crapita in that too)

    1. batfink

      Re: Wasn't Fujitsu

      Past behaviour is explicitly prohibited from being considered as a factor in evaluating UK government contracts.

      I wonder why?

  8. Clausewitz4.0 Bronze badge
    Devil

    We have a saying in Brazil

    If you program in COBOL for mainframes and are not yet senile, chances are you will be hired for good money

  9. bronskimac

    BOLLOX!

    I say again, utter gigantic hairy BOLLOX! If it's COBOL, which wouldn't surprise me, give me a manual (it's been a few decades since I used the Devil's own programming language) and a few days to dig around, and I'll fix it.

    1. JDPower666

      Re: BOLLOX!

      Ah, but have you donated a couple of mill to a government minister, if not your expertise is irrelevant.

    2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

      Re: BOLLOX!

      Fair enough - and will you "in a few days" also manage the training of thousands of staff all around the country ? And the updating of all the manuals and procedures ? And all the claimant information sources ?

      Oh yes, and thoroughly test it and personally take responsibility for fixing any issues that come up - including dealing with the press who sniff "another gov IT cockup" story ?

  10. Korev Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    The UK's chief finance minister, Rishi Sunak,

    He's the Chancellor, most readers (even Leftpondians) should be able to understand that...

    1. Vometia has insomnia. Again. Silver badge

      As an aside, I've noticed The Register now seems entirely written from a US perspective and isn't really the El Reg of old; most of the sly humour seems to have gone, too.

      1. DreamEater

        "As an aside, I've noticed The Register now seems entirely written from a US perspective and isn't really the El Reg of old; most of the sly humour seems to have gone, too."

        I think you're right, although I don't have any links to back it up, it's just a feeling.

        Was I the only one who felt sad when .co.uk went away?

      2. katrinab Silver badge
        Meh

        If it was described from a US perspective, he would have been called the Treasury Secretary.

      3. Fred Dibnah

        Agreed. Dabb’s column has lost the ‘Sir?’ from the title, presumably so no-one has to explain it to folks outside the UK.

    2. Danny 2

      @Korev

      Sunak's title is the Chancer of the Exchequer, who never pays his taxis.

      Unless we've been hearing that wrong in Scotland.

    3. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Titles, schmitles

      We'll call him whatever we like, TBH.

      Britain's Big Beancounter.

      C.

  11. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    ...for his decision not to increase social security payments

    Weren't there systems that had to be written from scratch for managing transport movements between countries post-Brexit? ISTR this was brushed off as lemon squeezy, and not a reason for not going ahead.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There's flexible

    And then there's "some moron just told the house that we are going to WHAT?"

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ahhh ...

    I remember loading tapes and splitting paper that came off those ICL machines.

    Back in the day when there were 3 shifts of us working in the data centre next to the Royal Lytham & St Annes golf course.

    Line printers pumping out 4m giros a fortnight, when there were only supposed to be 2m people unemployed

    Lookng for the giros that had a lesser value than the price of the envelope/stamp .. the good old day .. lol

    1. spireite Silver badge

      Re: Ahhh ...

      I remember receiving a letter from HMRC stating I owed them £1.50, this was back in 96.

      Even then I thought what are they doing - it'll have cost them more to chase it rather than write it off.

  14. xyz123 Silver badge

    This is a total 100% lie by the government. The DWP system relies on "tokens"(you're on benefit 1 2 or 3 which fills a 2nd field with the amount of money you get) but this field can be manually edited to any value you want. Adjusting the value notifies a superior staff member who confirms the value is OK and thats it.

    Amounts are then paid out. The fact they are saying paid values are fixed is total barefaced lies.

    But they won't let ANYONE outside the DWP see the system....I wonder why

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      "This is a total 100% lie by the government."

      Of course. It's almost as if the value of pensions and benefits hasn't risen at all in over a decade...

      But, then, this government seems to consider truth and reality as unwanted and somewhat alien concepts.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm no way to increase payments

    That system would. Ever have gotten past the first financial year if I could not increase payments.

    They seem to have been able to do it for covid, sounds to me like Rishi does not want to pony up the dough.

    And the rewrite who has that project ?

    An Indian outsource company by any chance ?

  16. Ashto5

    Why slag off COBOL

    COBOL is a brilliant language.

    Very linear no “promises” that work would be done.

    I worked on the National Insurance system back in the late 80’s.

    The problems stemmed from Authur Anderson’s “droids” six weeks out of uni designing the architecture of the system and carrying out the analysis.

    I was let go for correcting one of their specs that basically had an IF statement that was so wrong it would have taken a genius to find a way to get it wrong.

    Back in the 80’s they charged £1,000 a day for these grads.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The fundamental problem here..

    .. is people who seem to believe that other people exist for the benefit of companies, rather than the other way around.

    Everything humans have ever created exists, at some level, for the benefit of one or more humans. Unfortunately, some of those things exist to benefit some humans at the expense of other humans - and the economic system is probably the prime culprit, as it positively encourages greed and other sociopathic behaviours. As a system it causes many to live in fear for their future ability to be able to keep a roof over their head, clothes on their body and food in their bellies - because it allows some people to not have those things for extended periods of time, no matter the detriment to their physical or mental health, whilstt allowing a few to amass mind-boggling amounts of personal wealth.

    Whilst the design and implementation of an economic system that discourages sociopathic behaviour is a pair of decidedly non-trivial problems, it's the inerent values of the current economic system that is largely to blame for the apalling state of te benefits system in the UK, which is decidedly punitive.Notionally, if for some reason you are unable to work, whether temporarily or permanently, there are agencies and benefits that can help, all you have to do is to apply for them. In practice, you have to somehow know that they exist, and do whatever the system says that you have to in order to apply for and obtain those benefits, irrespective of your current ability to do what the system requires. And you are expected to magically get by for the months or even years it can take to obtain the benefits you have applied for, no matter that that delay may cause you ill health, homelessness, or even death.

    It is an inhumane system that is not fit for purpose. It presumes, by default, that the applicant is claiming for something that they do not deserve, and for help that they do not need. Apologists for the system say things like "Well, we want to ensure that benefits go only to the deserving , rather than fraudsters". However laundable that aim may be, a system that presumes grift and refuses to give help to those in need in a timely manner because a tiny monority abuse the system is a system that punishes those that are in need of help for being in need of help. My experience of applying for PIP is that the only people who get it on their first attempt are either extraordinarily lucky to have had their need accepted at the first attempt - or they are very determined grifters.

    The benefits system as it currently exists causes hardship and ill health before it ever provides help for hardship and ill health, most notoriously, it greatly exacerbates or even causes mental health problems. My health, whilst poor when I first applied for benefit three years or so ago, dropped off a cliff due to the strain imposed on me by a system that assumes by default that I must be lying about my need for help. It is only n the last few months that I have received all that I am entitled to, and that only due to the hard work of a good friend who helped with the paperwork and bureaucracy after my first claim was refused for no discernible reason, because I simply could not face trying to go through that process, and its appeal system, myself, unaided. In the intervening time, I have become unable to look after my flat properly and barely able to keep myself going - I am in a far worse state than whe I first applied for benefits, and so will now need more help than I would have had "the system" worked promptly. And I gather from workers at a charitable organisation that is doing its best to help me, that this is a common, not a rare, experience amongst those who come to be in need of help.

    Something along the lines of a Universal Basic Income would help enormously to reduce the suffering caused by the current beefits system - at least you wouldnt have to worry about being able to keep a roof over your head and whether or not you're going to be able to afford to eat this week. But such a system isn't liked by a governemnt who sees "the economy" as fundamental to everything, who thinks that we must all serve the needs of the economy. Whihj makes their decision when, due to corporate greed , the entire banking system damned near fell apart, the government decided to give billions of pounds of taxpayers money to the very corporations that caused the problem, claiming that it ws needful to do so "to get the economy back on track" or some such.

    There was another possibility - distribute those billions to the population in general - that would have had far better effects overall. Those in poverty and debt would have been able to decrease or possibly even rid themselves of their debt burden. People who didnt have debt would mostly have sent the windfall on holidays or goods, benefiting the consumers, the companies they buy from, the logistics chain, and the banks behind all that. But the government decided to go for the worst option, that of rewarding the miscreants who caused the problem at the expense of the rest of us.

    I'm far from being the only one who sees the clear ethical failure of both the economic system as a whole and the UK benefits system in particular; and the government that is responsible for overseeing both. Ad why do we have government? For the benefit of the populace f the country, fundamentaly, and yet most politicians seem to think that its the benefit of corporations or the extremely wealthy few that matters most, and that the rest of us exist only to further the aims of the corporations and the wealthy few. And then they have the gall to express surprise and regret every time some sociopathic individuals cause yet more financial grief to others by abusing stock markets, employment practices, etc.

    I don't have a magic fix fr it all, but it'd certainly help to start reducing the damage caused by current systems if it were drilled into everyone - enshrined in law, if posible - that businesses exist to benefit people, people do not exist to benefit cusinesses; and that the aim of a benefit system is to provide rapid and effective help to those in need. There will always be grifters, no matter the system, but that is no excuse for making the lives of those who are not dishonest a living hell due to the existence of a minority of bad actors. Amongst those bad actors are the very politicians who view the governments job as being to serve the whims of businesses., rather than the needs of the populace in general.

    At this point some may be thinking that I am advocating communisim, but I really am not. That utter disaster of a failed political experiment only ever suggested tinkering with the current economic system, rather than replacing it wholesale with something better. We desperately need a better system than the sociopathic unjust one that has wrecked so many lives and brought the world to the brink - and possibly over the edge - of disaster, all in the ignoble pursuit of financial profit irrespective of everything else. It's time that collectively, we had a society and systems that have the well-being of the populace as its primary objective, rather than the well being of a construct that treats humans as disposable interchangeable parts that cost too much.

  18. Halfmad

    Blame the IT but..

    I would put money on it being a LACK OF KNOWLEDGE problem instead with the people who knew or understood the system in depth having left for retirement etc and there being insufficient documentation.

    They likely need to more or less start from scratch.

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