Computerising: Lessons from the DHSS Pensions Strike

Pages17-22
Date01 January 1987
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/eb055092
Published date01 January 1987
AuthorLeslie Willcocks,David Mason
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour
Computerising:
Lessons from
the DHSS
Pensions Strike
by Leslie Willcocks
Department of Management, Economic
and Industrial Studies, Polytechnic of the
South Bank, London, and
David Mason
Department of Computing, North East
London Polytechnic
Introduction
Crises and strikes can provide valuable insights into, and
lessons about, the conduct of industrial relations. This is
particularly true in the case of the seven-month "Pensions
Strike"
at the Department of Health and Social Security
(DHSS) centre in Newcastle. Here, a technically and
financially focused management and its advisers ignored
some of the very human problems involved in the work
practices, pay and conditions surrounding computer
technology. One side-effect was industrial action which,
even Government sources admit, cost more than £150
million.
This lost in a single year ten per cent of the supposed
savings offered by a much larger computer project the
15-year "Operational Strategy" to computerise the entire
DHSS benefits system. It also created a backlog of work
within existing DHSS computer centres and local offices that
had still not been sorted out by early 1986. The knock-on
effect has been to jeopardise seriously the entire
implementation schedule of the "Operational Strategy"
within the DHSS.
This article focuses on the largest computerisation project
in Europe. It reveals that deficiences in planning the
introduction of new technology, limited objectives, and the
failure to understand the industrial relations and personnel
implications of those plans will crucially show up at the
implementation stage. It demonstrates the costs of seeing
industrial relations only as an "implementation problem" and
perceiving implementation narrowly as "putting prior policy
decisions into action"
[1].
Crises are, or should be, learning processes. As a former
senior Ford personnel manager
said:
If there is
a
learning process in industrial conflict, it reflects the
attempts by actors in the system to close the gap between the
technical and human systems. Much of our social disruption
arises because of our failure to invest sufficient resources and
energy into social engineering as compared with technical
engineering[2].
At the very least, the product of an event like the pensions
strike should be more detailed planning of the
implementation of the operational strategy, informed by
greater sensitivity on the industrial relations issues. We find
that, in so far as this has now happened, an inadequate
implementation approach is still being pursued by DHSS
management.
The analysis that follows would seem to have considerable
relevance for all work organisations anticipating or
implementing microtechnological change.
The Background
Why computerise the service of the Department of Health
and Social Security? The DHSS is one of Britain's largest
employers and accounts for almost one-third of the total
UK tax take. In fact, the huge benefits system performs
fundamentally only three basic tasks recording workers'
national insurance contributions, assessing benefit
entitlement and making payments to individual claimants.
However, its size and complexity creates many
administrative problems[3]. Moreover, the standard of
service has been falling for many years, while, according
to union figures, supplementary benefit staff saw their work-
loads increase by 50 per cent between 1979 and 1984[4].
This has meant that administrative staff at local offices are
overloaded, and in some cases overwhelmed, with claims,
assessments, calculations and payments all done
manually. The pressure of work and the maze of regulations
causes miscalculation of benefit of nearly ten per cent of
cases[5].
It also contributes to widespread fraud, on the one
hand,
and, on the other, to millions of pounds of benefit
going unclaimed by the public because procedures are too
complicated for them to follow[6].
The position is further aggravated by poor internal
organisation. Communications between different offices is
paper driven and clumsy. Each benefit is administered
separately, so one applicant may exist in up to five different
files inside the system, as well as being completely
duplicated within unemployment files held by the
Department of Employment.
Given these problems and the extent of rising costs and
deteriorating services, the DHSS has been an obvious
candidate for a new technology solution.
ER 9,1 1987 17

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