[pjc50]

"Universal Credit" is a horrendous scheme that manages to combine (malicious) ignorance of the needs of its beneficiaries with ignorance of how to run a large software project.

The idea sounds great on paper - there are a lot of different benefits, why not reduce duplication by merging them into one scheme then only asking for personal information once - but it ignores cashflow. People can be left without money to live on for weeks. It's also a classic "big bang" project which just piles the requirements of existing systems together, and hands them to one of the traditional government crony contractors: Accenture, HP and IBM. At least it didn't involve Serco.

[coldacid]

Sounds like the Phoenix payroll project here in Canada, except for social services. There is no way this will end well, and I wouldn't be surprised if it leads (indirectly) to the death of clients.

[TomK32]

Oh Phoenix is just a incomplete system rolled out too early. Universial Credit is pure evil. The person-gets-benefits-cut-for-having-heart-attack-at-appointment evil. The months-deceased-claimant-gets-invited-for-appointment evil. The benefit-cut-because-assessor-didn't-show-up-for-house-visit evil. The no-benefit-payouts-in-the-first-six-weeks evil.

(those are all real cases you can find in UK newspapers, mostly the Guardian)