Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
2
Accepted
Publish revised business case detailing health assessment transformation benefits and progress tracking for claimants.
Recommendation
There is a risk that the Department will deliver a new service without the important improvements to claimant’s experience. The Department intends to make a lot of changes to the process of making a claim before it launches the new health assessment service in 2029. In advance of this, it plans to build its own case management IT system and develop the new service. It then needs to use a ‘test-and- learn approach’ to trial changes and identify what works to improve the claimant experience. The Department needs to have identified exactly what its new health assessment service will look like by 2027 to either invite the private sector to bid for new contracts or prepare to bring the service in-house. The Department recognises that if its test-and-learn activity reveals the proposed changes do not deliver the intended transformation in claimant experience, it can still issue the contracts for 2029 based on the current service. Given the extent of changes it wants to trial before 2027, we believe the greatest risk to the programme is that the Department focuses exclusively on the delivery of a new digitalised service, without achieving the important transformational change in the experience of claimants on which the wider benefits of the programme rely. Recommendation 1: The Department should publish a revised business case, no later than spring 2024, with details on how its desired transformation of the health assessments for disability benefits will result in the promised benefits for claimants and how it will track and assess progress towards this.
Government Response Summary
The government committed to publishing a summary of the Transformation Programme business case by Spring 2024, along with its Accounting Officer Assessment, after receiving necessary clearances.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Transformation Programme (HTP) business case, based on the approved Programme scope at November 2023. This business case is based on delivery of the HTP in line with the current programme plan, as well as the costs and benefits of the transformed Personal Independence Payments (PIP) end-to-end journey, including Apply for PIP. The Programme’s benefits, as outlined in the business case, will be tracked by the department using a combination of administrative data analysis, and both qualitative and quantitative research, as set out in the Programme’s Evaluation Strategy (published in May 2023). The department will publish a summary of the business case following the receipt of the necessary internal and cross-government clearances, which the department expects to receive by Spring 2024. The department will also publish a summary of its Accounting Officer Assessment alongside this.