Case Study: Child Support Agency and the CS2 Information System
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) won the contract to develop an information system known as CS2 to support the work of the newly created Child Support Agency (CSA) in the United Kingdom. It is claimed that the failure of this information system contributed to the closure of the CSA and cost the UK taxpayer over a billion pounds sterling (DWP, 2006).
The CSA was a UK Government Executive Agency and was part of the Department for Work and Pensions in Great Britain and the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland. The agency was launched on April 5, 1993 and was responsible for implementing the 1991 Child Support Act and subsequent legislation.
Child support, or child maintenance, is the contribution from a non-resident parent towards the financial cost of raising off spring. Maintenance is paid to the person with whom the child lives. The level and conditions of payment can either be mutually agreed between the two parties, or, in case of disagreement, decided by legal means.
The CSA as originally conceived was a government organisation whose primary purpose was information handling. For instance, the CSA was expected to:
Receive and assess applications for child maintenance. This involved identifying and locating non-resident parents and confirming paternity.
Calculate the payments to be made by non-resident parents. This involved establishing the non-resident parent’s income or benefits status, determining the existence of children in the non-resident parent’s current household and confirming levels of shared care.
Maintain the accuracy of maintenance assessments. Any changes informed to the circumstances of the caring parent or the non-resident parent demanded recalculation of the maintenance payable.
Collect money from non-resident parents and pay such money to the parent with care. This normally involved establishing a payment schedule with both parties.
Enforce assessments. The agency was expected to chase missing payments and collect debt, which may have built up.
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MITS4001 Business Information Systems
After its creation in the early 1990s the CSA experienced difficulties in administering child support. This was apparently due to the complex rules embedded in the originating legislation that the agency was required to administer.
In 2000 a new system of child support was introduced with the aim of simplifying the rules for child support and including a simplified calculation of maintenance. It was decided that the substantial business restructuring caused by these changes were to be supported by the introduction of a new ICT system.
In 2004, EDS was criticised by the UK’s National Audit Office for its work on ICT system for the CSA. This work ran seriously over budget and was over two years late in delivery despite following the gateway review process mandated for the management of large projects of this nature and having spent over 91 million on external advice. These problems eventually led to the resignation of the CSA’s head since the blame for this failure was laid partly at the door of the CSA. It was claimed that they did not have sufficient internal technical staff to be an ‘intelligent customer’ of EDS. Consequently, it took some time to establish an effective partnership between the CSA and EDS.
Following its introduction in March 2003 the CSA experienced problems with the operation of the new ICT system. The system somehow managed to overpay 1.9 million people and underpay around 700,000. This meant that the CSA was obliged to write off 1 billion in claims; while 750 million in child support payments from absent parents remained uncollected. An internal EDS memo was leaked that admit-ted that the system was ‘badly designed, badly tested and badly implemented’.
Claims were made that this failure was partly due to the way in which a large and complex ICT system, at the upper end of what was achievable at the time, was introduced at the same time as attempts were being made to restructure the CSA.
In the period between 1993 and 2003 the CSA estimated that it had collected over 5 billion in maintenance payments and administered over 1.5 million live cases in 2006.
In December 2006, the Department of Work and Pension released its Child Support white paper outlining its plans for the future of Child Support. It was announced by John Hutton MP that the CSA would be shut down, and replaced by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC). This will be a non-departmental public body, therefore removed from the direct control of the Department of Work and Pensions.
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