public sector<\/p>\n
After CEO promised ‘flagship use-case’ for AI, retired scheme members still struggling to make ends meet, MPs hear<\/p>\n
The UK government has withheld \u00a310 million in payments to tech and business process outsourcing biz Capita following the disastrous takeover of the Civil Service pensions scheme (CSPS). <\/p>\n
The penalties (\u00a39.9 million) in the \u00a3239 million contract relate to the transition from the earlier scheme provider to the Capita service. Since the service went live in December last year, Capita has continued to miss the majority of its KPIs and is locked in a dispute with the government over further penalties, MPs heard yesterday. The outsourcing giant apologized for its performance to MPs in the meeting, which can be viewed here<\/a>. <\/p>\n Capita had promised to use AI to help automate the administration of the 1.7-million member pensions scheme. But after The Register revealed<\/a> its troubled launch in December last year, the performance has continued to hit the lives of civil servants waiting for their pensions, some of whom have been \u201cleft struggling to make ends meet at a pivotable point in their life, causing them significant distress and anxiety,\u201d according to the chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown. <\/p>\n Speaking to a joint meeting of the PAC and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Andrew Forzani, government chief commercial officer, said \u00a39.9 million would be withheld from Capita for failing the transition. Forzani said the government had hired an auditor to settle a claim for further penalties. <\/p>\n \u201cIn addition to that, we have been deducting monies every single month for failed service delivery. We haven’t declared those numbers because we are in dispute with Capita about the numbers each month, because of some lack of agreement on some of the data, which is why we’ve brought in the independent auditor,\u201d he told MPs. <\/p>\n Cat Little, civil services chief operating officer, told the joint committee that Capita was on track to fail 16 of its 21 headline KPIs this month. \u201cThey are not at the pace they need to move through the processing of the work, the backlog is just getting higher and higher, so my expectation is that this trend worsens and worsens, unless something radically shifts in their ability to tackle the most important, urgent, high-priority work.\u201d<\/p>\n As it transitioned to take over the service last year, Capita gave no indication its contract win would lead to this kind of performance on what is developing into a national scandal. <\/p>\n Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said he felt personally let down by the Capita chief executive over assurances given before it took over running the scheme. \u201cI was being told by the chief executive, on 25th of November last year \u2014 before the go-live date on the first of December \u2014 that the UK government would be presiding over the largest AI-enabled pension in the UK, and I would therefore have \u2014 and I quote \u2014 \u2018a flagship use case\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n