Minister says system is shape of things to come

More than 750 people made benefits applications over the internet in the first two weeks of the online service going live, Computing can reveal.

The basic eBenefits service launched by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) at the end of March attracted more than 40 applications on its first day. A week later online claims had almost doubled.

The project is part of the DWP’s efforts to cut costs and use technology to make services easily accessible to citizens.

While eBenefits is still in its very early stages, even the rudimentary service is a significant step forward, pensions minister Stephen Timms told Computing.

‘There is a lot of potential for this over the next few years to help us meet our objectives and improve the service,’ said Timms.

‘We want to make our services as convenient as possible to use, and there are lots of advantages for us as well because it involves less staff time and means the data is more accurate,’ he said.

The DWP is one of Whitehall’s biggest departments. It pays out more than £1bn per year, has almost as many customers as Tesco, and the largest estate of Fujitsu mainframes in the world.

It also has the sternest efficiency target, to strip nearly £1bn from its running costs by 2007/8 and cut headcount by 40,000.

Technology implementations such as eBenefits are central to helping meet those targets.