h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Software upgrades (TAKEN FROM HERE)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4606263.stm

The biggest single failure to hit welfare is thought to have been at the Department of Work and Pensions, where 80% of computers were affected in November.

A routine software upgrade affected desktop computers so users could not access some information, and fax replaced e-mail as the method of communication. Some checks were reportedly written by hand.

Before that, a new £456m computer system at the Child Support Agency, introduced in March 2003, was blamed for a backlog of 170,000 cases.
[[Mine being one of them ,wonder^^^ how long before tool failier blamed, bad workmen)
Later that year, EDS lost the £3bn IT contract at the Inland Revenue after being blamed for a catalogue of errors over tax credit payments.

But there are still problems - the deadline for electronic tax returns was extended in February when the website crashed.

Our state had similar problems.

For a year or more they could not issue checks or food stamps.
It was after putting in a new computer system.
I do not know what happened but last I heard they were wanting their old computer system back. It was tragic for many folks

Hi abbi Is the mighty great britain now as inneficent as a state in the US of A now ,they could not get it right even if the computor system was working. most of the mess is caused by the not sharing of information and superivsors being moved around to much along with civil servents all interputing the rules to next years budgets and last years deficets.

The C.S.A a whacking great big tock up from the start .trouble being centralised administration orchestrated from five diferrent areas in GB and the complaints and enquries lines being redirected to an office in Dehli . Mind you A bad workman allways blames his tools ,to many automated processes not enough allowences or flexibility.

Oh my sounds like a terrible mess.

We have a lot of stuff that gets stuck between the states and the Federal government and now the private charities that Bush wanted to take up the slack. The larger charities seem to be supporting candidates rather than taking care of individuals.

Hmmmm I bet some of ours stretches to Dehli too, now that you mention it. Hope you are getting by somehow.

It is not just the basic pension that is inadequate. The basic pension was so useless that the Government invented a second pension, which is useless as well. It is called, imaginatively, the state second pension, and it takes 40 years to be completely useless, because the first people to accrue a full pension under it have just left university. If they work for 40 years and receive the basic pension and the state second pension at the full rate, they will be so poor that they will need a means test. That is how good the state second pension really is. It takes 40 years to build up to an amount of money that does not lift people above the poverty line. Can that be the ambition of the Government for generations to come?

Not only do we have a useless basic pension and a useless second pension, but the Government have invented a third, called the pension credit, which is due to be introduced in October to make up for the fact that the first two are useless. However, that will be even worse.

The Government have had some problems with their credits recently. The computers have not worked, but help is at hand. The new pension credit scheme will be introduced not on a new computer—so we can relax—but on the existing computer. The only problem is that the previous Secretary of State described, in a rather appropriate way given the nature of the benefit, the computer that will be used in October as "very decrepit". If that does not fill hon. Members' hearts with horror in the light of the credit system, I do not know what will.
from
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2003-06-04.238.1

Yup things still not changed much