By Paul SpickerThe writer argues that official estimates of benefit fraud have been “inflated beyond anything the evidence can sustain” by a politically driven process of exaggeration and double-counting. He argues that the government’s widely quoted fraud figure of 7 billion pounds (or 7 per cent of the annual social security budget) was arrived at by including unintentional “claimant error”, adding together different ways of counting the same suspicion and distorting survey evidence. He stresses that abuse of the system does need to be taken seriously, but focusing public discussions of the welfare state on the alleged misbehaviour of a mythical “underclass” is not helpful. Figures show that poverty is not a problem restricted to a permanent minority in society, because most people are likely to be on low incomes at some point in their lives. Rarely is poverty passed from generation to generation, because most poverty is temporary and most poor children do not grow up to be poor adults.

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The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs announcement that it plans to outsource IT services shortly has angered the Public and Commercial Services Union. Under the previous Conservative Government, IT services were market tested and the ‘in house’ team provided the winning bid. Subsequently a Better Quality Service review concluded that outsourcing of in-house IT services would not be cost-effective. The Union, with 1000 members working in IT, is infuriated that the plan will lead to competition between private sector companies and that the ‘in house’ team will be excluded from the process.The Parliamentary Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has already criticised the plans and strongly recommended that DEFRA delay any outsourcing decision until a comprehensive departmental IT strategy is in place. DEFRA argues its IT strategy is ‘work in progress’ that will be developed by private consultants during the outsourcing process.

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The team in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister developing the ‘Maps on Tap’ project soon realized that they were creating a winning concept. The project aim was to bring together maps produced by Ordinance Survey with databases of planning and land use statistics. It soon became clear that the application they were developing was just the tip of an iceberg. Many organizations both within and outside government need information related to geographical areas. Where someone lives is often a vital factor in making decisions in the public and private sectors. Linking geographical information to a whole range of databases provides a sound basis for decision making. It also allows comparisons to be made between places, areas, regions, or across the UK.The scope of the project has now been widened to include all public services with access though the Government Secure Intranet and the Internet. A one year licencing agreement with Ordnance Survey has been set up and a full scale managed service is being developed. This will include providing a service to businesses and members of the public to find out what is happening in an area in terms of planning and other developments.

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