ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates computerisation in the UK agency with responsibility for delivering social security benefits: the Benefits Agency, formerly within the Department of Social Security. The Benefits Agency was the largest agency formed out of the Department of Social Security (DSS) under the government’s Next Steps programme in 1991. It is responsible for the delivery and administration of the major social security benefits in the UK: income support, pensions, invalidity benefit (the three largest benefits), child benefit, family credit, disability living and working allowances and the social fund. The operations of the organisation are huge and of comparable size in relation to total population as in the equivalent organisation in the US: the UK Benefits Agency maintains records for 60 million people and the US Social Security Administration for 260 million. By 1994, the Benefits Agency’s total yearly expenditure on benefits was £32,400 million administered to 15,140 beneficiaries. Operations were conducted by around 90,000 staff through nearly 500 local offices (DSS, 1993; ITSA, 1995). The proportion of benefit expenditure spent on administration was 5 per cent, while the percentage of administration cost spent on information technology costs was 19 per cent.
