Government Computer Systems

YorkshireBoy

Having a mid-life crises at the moment regarding pensions. Fairly happy that I've left a reasonable deferred pension at my previous employers 2 years ago (19/60th and a decent lump sum to look forward to), and got a good Scottish Life stakeholder with new employer - they put in 4.5% and with my contributions/tax relief/NI contracted out payments, there is probably the equivalent of around 20% of my salary going in. I'm hoping that between them they will generate around 2/3rds of my salary when I retire.

Anyway, I've just registered with the DWP's https://www.thepensionservice.gov.uk intending to get regular state pension forecasts, and I'm very surprised that the records they hold on me are incorrect! They say they have no record of my marriage in 1982!

Now I'm aware that the Government spend an absolute fortune on IT systems and find it very strange that the computers in the Inland Revenue/Department for Work and Pensions/etc can't access each others information. I find it even stranger that they don't all use the same computer!

The forecast is printable and there is a section for notes. One of my notes said that they have no record of my marriage and would I take the printout, along with my marriage certificate, to the local JobCentrePlus where they would "change my records".

I telephoned to check if this was "really" required and was told that if I didn't, there may be problems in later life...

1/ We may get 2 single pensions (could be a good thing £££££)

2/ (and this is the big one), if one of us was to die before reaching state retirement age there would likely be some MAJOR problems with paying out to the surviving partner.

Has anyone else found this (or other problems) when doing their state pension forecasts?


YB

isasmurf

YorkshireBoy wrote:

Now I'm aware that the Government spend an absolute fortune on IT systems and find it very strange that the computers in the Inland Revenue/Department for Work and Pensions/etc can't access each others information. I find it even stranger that they don't all use the same computer!

I've got nothing to input into your specific problem, but I would like to comment on this.

I am kept well up to date with the inadequecies of Government IT systems through the many friends I have inside the Civil Service.

Like every organisation dealing with data on an individual, each government department has to oblige by the Data Protection Act. For this reason government departments cannot share information with each other, unless there is something specific written into an Act to allow certain pieces of data to be shared, or it is for fraud detection purposes. Some departments are more protective of their data than others.

As for one computer across government, that's just a pipe dream. Some departments can't even get various computers in their department to talk to each other!