COMPUTERIZING THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM: AN OPERATIONAL STRATEGY IN LIEU OF A POLICY STRATEGY?
| Author | MICHAEL OHIGGINS |
| Published date | 01 June 1984 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1984.tb00556.x |
| Date | 01 June 1984 |
COMPUTERIZING THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM:
AN OPERATIONAL STRATEGY IN LIEU OF
A POLICY STRATEGY?
MICHAEL OHIGGINS
The operational strategy for social security
-
how to computerize one of the largest
manuallydominated ‘sort, act and file’ operations
in
the country
-
is the emergins product
of work which began in 1977 and has thus far produced a discussion document
(DHSS
19801, a strategy proposals document
(DHSS
1982), a high-level seminar
(DHSS
1983)
and
a wide range of consultations.
A
ministerial response to the strategy
-
likely to be the
go-ahead with only marginal amendments
-
was due before now but was delayed because
of the general election. What are the insights which the development of this strategy pro-
vides for those interested in public policy analysis? What are the questions which its nature
and prospects poses for public administration?
This
paper
is
concerned not with the technical
issues involved in the development of feasible database strategies but with the issues to
which the strategy gives rise. After a brief outline of the main features of the operational
strategy, it discusses the possible implications
of
the strategy for clients of the social security
s stem, and then examines some issues
of
policy co-ordination, inheritance and flexibility
t
K
rown up by the exercise.
THE OPERATIONAL STRATEGY
Social security expenditure is
an
increasingly large share of total government
spending: from just over
20%
in the mid-1970s it now accounts for almost 30%
of public expenditure
(OHggins
1983, table
2).
The
financial
costs of administering
this system are
not,
as a proportion
of
expenditure, particularly high by inter-
national standards, but the sheer size
of
this total expenditure means that the
projected administration costs for 1983/84
of
El509
million still amount to well
over
1%
of
public expenditure. The increasing numbers
of
people receiving benefit
in
recent years, together with the growing reIiance on administration-intensive
means-tested benefits (which is the implicit policy response to the changes
in
the
policy environment arising from increased unemployment and larger numbers
of
Michael
OHggms
is a
Lecturer
in
Social Policy at the Centre for the Analysis
of
Social Policy, University
of Bath. This is an amended version
of
a paper presented to the 13th annual conference
of
the Public
Administration Committee
on
Administration and
the
Information Revolution
held at the University
of
York, September
5-7
1983, and incorporates some aspects of a brief paper presented to the
SSRC
Social Security Workshop in December 1982. The author is grateful for the helpful comments
of
an
anonymous referee.
Public Administration
Vol.
62 Summer 1984 (201-210)
0
1984 Royal Institute of Public Administration
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