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      <div id="topic">News articles about the CSA</div>
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      <h1><a name="h1"></a>2003 articles</h1>
      <p class="centre">[ <a href="news_articles_2002_h2.htm">Previous</a> ]</p>
      <p>The quotes provided are normally directly from the original article, 
        but typically whole sentences and paragraphs are omitted, often without 
        indicating where the omission is, but without altering the order of presentation. 
        In some cases people's names are removed, and replaced thus &quot;[X]&quot;.</p>
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          <th class="headcell1">Date &amp; reference</th>
          <th class="headcell1">Extracts (not necessarily contiguous)</th>
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          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>2003-01-27<br>
              BBC</p>
            <p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2699179.stm">Delayed 
              CSA system to go online</a> </p>
          </td>
          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>The CSA has long been dogged by controversy </p>
            <p>A long-delayed Child Support Agency system designed to simplify 
              maintenance assessments is to be introduced in March, the government 
              has announced. Work and Pensions Secretary Andrew Smith said he 
              was now satisfied the new system, which was originally due to come 
              into effect in April 2002, would &quot;deliver a level of service 
              our customers have the right to expect&quot;. </p>
            <p> The new IT system is key to bringing in the much needed child 
              support scheme with its better, fairer, simpler system of calculating 
              maintenance. The new formula, designed to be an improvement on its 
              much criticised predecessor, uses a simple percentage rate of maintenance 
              payment - based on 15% of the absent parent's net income for one 
              child and 20% for two children. </p>
            <p>Mr Smith told MPs in a statement: &quot;Implementation of the new 
              IT system is key to bringing in the much needed child support scheme 
              with its better, fairer, simpler system of calculating maintenance. 
              &quot;It will help us target resources to make sure that more maintenance 
              is actually paid, getting more money to children more quickly.&quot; 
            </p>
            <p>The agency was now &quot;more customer focused&quot; and was collecting 
              &pound;200m more each year in child maintenance than it was five 
              years ago. </p>
            <p>&quot;Both my senior officials and I are now satisfied, on the 
              basis of the careful and comprehensive testing, that the system 
              will deliver the level of service our customers have the right to 
              expect,&quot; said Mr Smith. Mr Smith told MPs the government's 
              share of the bill had gone up by about 7% over the term of the contract. 
            </p>
            <p>&quot;While any extra costs are unwelcome, an increase on this 
              scale is not at all unusual for a complex project of this kind and 
              is justified to deliver this important reform,&quot; he said. Mr 
              Smith said his predecessor Alistair Darling had taken &quot;the 
              right decision&quot; in announcing last March that the new scheme 
              would be delayed until the government was confident the new IT was 
              &quot;working effectively&quot;. </p>
            <p>David Willetts, the shadow work and pensions secretary, welcomed 
              the announcement &quot;with some relief after years of delay&quot;. 
              But he said EDS, which built the new Child Support Agency computer 
              system, had blamed interference by ministers for the delay. &quot;We 
              know the government is going to pay more as a result of this delay 
              - that implies the government accepts some responsibility for what 
              has happened,&quot; he said. </p>
            <p>Liberal Democrat spokesman Paul Holmes predicted the announcement 
              marked only the start of the &quot;next shambles&quot;. Mr Holmes 
              said the new computer system was postponed in 2001 because it could 
              not cope with working out simple sums about people's income. He 
              asked: &quot;How will it cope with a sudden flood of information 
              when the one million existing cases are transferred to it?&quot; 
            </p>
            <p>From 3 March new CSA cases will be calculated using the new rules 
              and will come onto the system at a rate of 30,000 a month. The existing 
              1.1 million cases will be moved on to the new system when it is 
              clear the arrangements are working. </p>
            <p>Under the new rules, absent parents with net incomes of &pound;200 
              to &pound;2,000 a week will be expected to pay about 15% for one 
              child, 20% for two and 25% for three or more. For those parents 
              with incomes of less than &pound;100 a week, maintenance will be 
              set at &pound;5 a week. For those earning between &pound;100 and 
              &pound;200 a week there will be a sliding scale. </p>
          </td>
        </tr>
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          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>2003-01-28<br>
              Independent</p>
            <p><a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=373342">Long-delayed 
              CSA computer system to go live in March</a></p>
            <p>Nigel Morris, Political Correspondent</p>
          </td>
          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>The long-delayed overhaul of the Child Support Agency will finally 
              begin, 17 months late and having gone &pound;29m over-budget, Andrew 
              Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, announced yesterday. A new 
              system of payments will come into force in March after a catalogue 
              of problems developing the computer technology that will administer 
              it. </p>
            <p>The CSA is switching over to a new, streamlined system of payments, 
              arguing it will make them simpler and fairer. But the original start 
              date of October 2001 was delayed to last April and then postponed 
              again.</p>
            <p>In a Commons statement, Mr Smith said that after further tests 
              on the system, developed by the American company EDS, the Government 
              had concluded it would &quot;deliver a level of service that is 
              acceptable&quot;. But he added: 'With any system of this size, even 
              after exhaustive testing, there will be some bugs to be sorted out.&quot; 
              Mr Smith told MPs that because of the delay the bill for setting 
              up and running the system had risen by 7 per cent, from &pound;427m 
              to &pound;456m. &quot;The system has proved to be more complex than 
              had been originally thought and we have reached a negotiated agreement 
              with EDS to share these costs, with them meeting their share under 
              the contract,&quot; he said. &quot;While any extra costs are unwelcome, 
              an increase on this scale is not at all unusual for a complex project, 
              whether in the private or public sector, and is justified to deliver 
              this important reform.&quot;</p>
            <p>Initially the system will handle about 30,000 new CSA claims a 
              month. The 1.1 million existing cases will be gradually transferred.</p>
            <p>Under the reforms, absent parents with net incomes between &pound;200 
              and &pound;2,000 per week will pay 15 per cent of their income for 
              one child, 20 per cent for two children and 25 per cent for three 
              or more children. For those on less than &pound;100 a week, maintenance 
              will be set at &pound;5 a week, and there will be a sliding scale 
              for those on between &pound;100 and &pound;200 a week. Mr Smith 
              said: &quot;The new scheme will be more transparent, easier for 
              parents to understand, easier for the agency to calculate maintenance 
              and enforce payment, so children get the support they need.&quot; 
              Rounding on Tory criticism of the hold-up, he said: &quot;It was 
              right to delay rather than rush in with an incomplete system. Let 
              us remember why we are having to modernise the system. It was the 
              Tories who rushed this in 10 years ago. They had goodwill on all 
              sides of the House. It collapsed under its own weight because it 
              was overly complex.&quot;</p>
            <p>David Willetts, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, called 
              for more details of reasons for the over-run. He said EDS had blamed 
              it on ministerial interference, adding: &quot;The announcement only 
              affects new cases, so over a million families on the existing system 
              are still in the dark. When will they start to be moved on to the 
              new formula?&quot; </p>
          </td>
        </tr>
        <tr> 
          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>2003-01-28<br>
              The Times</p>
            <p><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-557670,00.html">Streamlined 
              child support payments ready to go ahead</a></p>
            <p> By Greg Hurst, Parliamentary Correspondent</p>
          </td>
          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>REFORM of the Child Support Agency is finally to go ahead after 
              the Government announced yesterday that it was confident that problems 
              with a new computer system had been overcome. From early March all 
              new cases for child maintenance will be based on a standard formula 
              using a proportion of the absent parent&#146;s net income, rather 
              than calculated case by case as before. </p>
            <p>The 1.1 million child support cases whose payments were worked 
              out under current arrangements will transfer to the new formula 
              later when ministers are satisfied that the computer system can 
              cope. The streamlined formula, under which most absent parents will 
              pay 15 per cent of net income for their first child, 20 per cent 
              for their second and 25 per cent for three or more children, was 
              announced in 1999. Problems with the computer system meant that 
              its introduction was delayed twice, most recently in March last 
              year. </p>
            <p>Andrew Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, told the Commons 
              yesterday that his department had negotiated a settlement with EDS, 
              the information technology company, to share the higher costs arising 
              from the delays. The Government&#146;s share would rise by &pound;29 
              million to &pound;456 million over the lifetime of the contract, 
              Mr Smith said. </p>
            <p>David Willetts, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, welcomed 
              the announcement but blamed the delays and higher costs on interference 
              by ministers. </p>
            <p>Kate Green, Director of the National Council for One Parent Families, 
              said: &#147;Thousands of lone parents who for years have scraped 
              by without child maintenance will be very relieved to learn that 
              the long period of waiting for reforms is over.&#148; It has been 
              criticised, however, by pressure groups, such as Families Need Fathers, 
              who argue that it penalises fathers who share the care of their 
              children and no longer takes account of housing costs or the mother&#146;s 
              income. </p>
            <p>The first to pay under the new system will be parents whose liability 
              for maintenance begins on or after March 3. Ministers expect 30,000 
              cases a month to be calculated using the formula thereafter. Some 
              absent fathers may be required to pay more but the change is designed 
              to make their liabilities easier to calculate in advance.</p>
          </td>
        </tr>
        <tr> 
          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>2003-02-02<br>
              The Independent </p>
            <p><a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=374746">EDS 
              bust-up exposes its dirty linen</a></p>
            <p>By Jason Niss&eacute;</p>
          </td>
          <td class="cellnormal"> 
            <p>EDS, the Texan technology firm that runs the Inland Revenue and 
              Child Support Agency computers, has been accused by a former senior 
              director of manipulating its figures, putting pressure on executives 
              to resign and spending millions on lavish entertainment for clients 
              and staff. </p>
            <p>Fred Steingraber, the former chief executive of EDS's consulting 
              arm, AT Kearney, details the accusations in a damaging legal document, 
              lodged in a US court last year. The deposition says that EDS chairman 
              Dick Brown and finance director James Daley inflated the group's 
              profits by early recording of income from contracts, failing to 
              record the risk factors on contracts and hiding problems with deals. 
            </p>
            <p>The row has blown up at a tricky time for EDS. Last week Andrew 
              Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said he had 
              negotiated a settlement with EDS in the long-running dispute about 
              the Child Support Agency computer system. EDS will have to pay the 
              DWP up to &pound;30m for delays to the system.</p>
            <p>EDS is also close to making a joint bid, with Accenture, for the 
              &pound;7bn Aspire contract to run and modernise the Inland Revenue 
              computer system. </p>
          </td>
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            <p>&nbsp;</p>
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      <p class="centre">[ <a href="news_articles_2002_h2.htm">Previous</a> ]</p>
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<!-- #BeginDate format:Sw1 -->17 December, 2003<!-- #EndDate -->
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