Rotherham's partnership with BT began in 2003 for a 12-year period. The main driver was the need for additional investment, which could not be provided by the Council without putting pressure on council tax increases. Staff have been seconded to the Partnership and remain employees of the Council.
The Council is now leading on the national benefits project and has been involved in examining and re-engineering the benefits processes. Service performance has remained strong and performance has remained in the top quartile for revenues and benefits performance indicators in 2003/04.
The National e-Benefits Project is working towards improving the delivery of housing benefit, council tax benefit, free school meals, discretionary housing payments and fairer charging to local authority customers. It has been developing as a single, coherent, customer-facing 'front-end' system, as well as exploring the cultural and physical changes required to implement the system in individual local authorities.
The system will assess eligibility for all welfare benefits throughout local and central government, helping to improve the quality of service that customers receive from their local authority and reducing the number of visits and paper forms that need to be completed.
The Project will provide the basis for how other benefit services could evolve and integrate more widely, contributing to the future aspirations of central government for joined-up services with the potential for closer links. This means that once an assessment has been made, the information collected will automatically be transferred to all relevant organisations so the claim can be processed without delay. Once the consent of the claimant is given, the data can be shared more widely to reduce the time and effort involved in claiming additional benefits.
Benefit claims can also be managed using the e-Benefits system. By interrogating with the other benefit administering systems, a user would be authorised to access the data held, which would then be verified for accuracy and updates applied to the different systems.
The e-Benefits system will improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of the benefit services within local government, as well as improving the overall service that customers experience when claiming benefits. Instances of fraud and overpayment will be reduced and the issue of unclaimed benefit will be addressed.
The e-Benefits system is a web-based product, allowing access to any authorised and authenticated organisation that has use of an internet browser. The system will be applicable across all sizes of local authority and yet will reflect the requirements that are specific to individual organisations.
Use of the Government Gateway will ensure that data can be shared between all government organisations, intermediaries and their commercial partners that have responsibility for providing advice about, or the administration of, any type of welfare benefit. The protocols used promote a secure, yet accessible, portal for the sharing of this data and provide the facility to enable the reconciliation of benefits across the UK through the provision of 'joined-up government'.
The partnership has also been involved in examining and re-engineering the benefits processes. Service performance has remained strong - performance was in the top quartile for revenues and benefits performance indicators in 2003/04.
In relation to the efficiency challenge, what barriers did they encounter?
- Risk aversion
- Partnerships
- External pressures