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During the past two years Jobcentre Plus has faced considerable upheaval in trying to accommodate both organisational change and meet the DWP target for efficiency savings (which requires the loss of 15,000 staff by March 20008). This report looks at how these changes have affected the ability of the Agency to meet its objectives in relation to: employment and training programmes; the capacity and role of Personal Advisors; the performance of the Customer Management System; the principles behind and the performance of Contact Centres. It concludes that too much was attempted too quickly, the planning and IT processes were not up to the job and service levels suffered. As a result Jobcentre Plus failed one of the tests of the Gershon programme that service quality should not deteriorate as a result of the efficiency process.
This NAO report examines the role and cost effectiveness of contact services for customers from the Department for Work and Pensions. During the 2004-05 period the Department spent £190 million on running contact centres. The centres themselves answered more than 33 million incoming calls, and made 7 million outgoing calls, as well as handling 300,000 e-mails, 30,000 faxes and 4 million incoming letters and application forms. The Department serves a wide range of customers, including 28 million pensioners and benefit recipients, paying out £112 billion a year in benefits and pensions. This report sets out a number of recommendations: that the Department should develop its understanding of customer demand and improve its forecasting processes; that the Department should aim to offer a seamless service, by reducing the number of telephone contact points, as well as sharing good practice techniques across such areas as forecasting and training; that contractual arrangements for staff should match the demand needs of customers, and that contact centre targets should therefore focus on customer need; that the Department should advance initiatives to improve its information on costs.
The Universal Credit pilots (Pathfinders) will begin in the north west of England in April 2013 and full national roll-out is due to start in October 2013. The Government has designed a welfare system which should help ease the transition from benefits to work, but significant concerns remain about the potential impact of the changes on some of the most vulnerable benefit claimants, especially the online claims system and the proposed single monthly payment. The Government needs to reflect on its ambitious implementation timetable. Under Universal Credit, payments to cover the costs of rent will go to the benefit claimant, rather than direct to the landlord. This is a major change and the Committee therefore recommends that, during the initial phases of implementation, claimants who currently have their housing costs paid to their landlord should have the option to continue with this arrangement. The Committee also notes that it has not yet received sufficient evidence to satisfy itself that the Government will achieve its stated aim of ensuring more generous support for the disabled. The Government plans to calculate monthly Universal Credit payments by using information taken from data feeds from HMRC's new Real Time Information (RTI) system though there are concerns about that programme. The Committee, further, recognises that there is likely to be a significant increased demand for advice services during the four-year transition to Universal Credit. The report also comments on closely-related policy areas, including: the conditionality and sanctions regime; passported benefits; localisation of council tax support; localisation of the Social Fund
As information and communication technologies change the lives of people around the world, governments must find solutions that increase public value to citizens through, for example, the use of internet which has the power to transform government service delivery and public administration. The present publication is a compilation of recent case studies of innovative e-government solutions, services and applications with 200 case studies from 48 countries. Topics covered include e-democracy, gender equality, e-education, e-commerce, information access, and citizen service delivery.
The focus of this review is how to save government, citizen and business time and money by examining the scope of integrating front-line service delivery. The Service Sector is an important economic bulwark in a modern society, with technology revolutionizing the way service providers interact with customers. Yet, with the continued pace of social, demographic and technological change, public service delivery is facing an increasing challenge, with a gap developing between public and private service delivery. Central Government delivers such services through departments, whilst departments make use of agents or agencies alone or in co-operation with local government. Such a system develops a transactional relationship, that is, the department focuses on the specific customer need, but does not take account of the overview, that is the Government's relationship with the citizen, who may need multiple services, but has to contact the various but separate helplines, call centres, front-line offices and websites to obtain the relevant service they require. A similar situation seems to apply to business, with the need to provide the same data to different parts of government, for different services. The report believes that a much more fundamental and widespread change is necessary if the public service economy is to match the performance of the best service providers. The Service Sector should follow international developments and learn from other countries' experiences of creating a more responsive and integrated public service. This report focuses on the opportunities for change in the channels through which services are delivered to citizens and business, especially the development of single points of contact with government to meet a range of their needs and those of business. This report builds on those published by Sir Peter Gershon (ISBN 1845320328) and Sir Michael Lyons (ISBN 1845320093) in 2004 (available on HM Treasury website).
The Internet has become an important way of improving the delivery of public services. The government spends an estimated £208 million a year on delivering services and related information online, such as the renewal of vehicle excise duty, the filing of tax returns and for the matching of applicants to jobs. But a quarter of government organisations still cannot provide data on the cost of their websites, over 40 per cent of organisations can only provide estimates, and 16 per cent of government organisations do not have a good knowledge about the users of their websites. Even where user data are being collected, they are not always being used to inform and improve websites. A third of sites do not meet the Cabinet Office's own user accessibility standards. The government has embarked on an ambitious strategy to move most citizen and business facing internet services and related information to two websites, Direct.gov.uk and businesslink.gov.uk, by 2011. These sites are well regarded by the public and industry and both have received awards. The government also aims to rationalise websites by closing almost 1,000 unnecessary sites. For government, internet services are cheaper than traditional ways of delivering services and information. However, 75 per cent of socially excluded people and 51 per cent of people on low incomes do not use the internet. There is a risk that these groups, who are often major users of public services, will not benefit from the government's drive to expand the use of the internet.
The result of two years work by 19 experienced policymakers and two Nobel prize-winning economists, 'The Growth Report' is the most complete analysis to date of the ingredients which, if used in the right country-specific recipe, can deliver growth and help lift populations out of poverty.