Rachel Reeves – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rachel Reeves on 2014-06-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when the IT system developed by his Department for universal credit will be fully operating; and when this system will start to be decommissioned to make way for the digital solution developed by the Cabinet Office.

Esther McVey

As part of the wider transformation in the development of digital services, the Department will further develop the work completed jointly with the Government Digital Service to test and implement an enhanced digital service. This enhanced digital service will integrate work and benefits activity allowing us to deliver the full scope of Universal Credit for all claimant types.

Our single target operating model sets out how we will transform our approach and ways of working to ultimately make the Universal Credit service fully available online. Where it is both practical and operationally sensible to do so, we will integrate together the enhanced digital service with the existing Universal Credit service.

We expect an early version of the digital service to be introduced to a limited number of claimants and staff by the end of 2014.