Benefits and spend

via Government Computing 14 August

£1.24bn is a lot of money, even for government IT. It is nearly as much as Connecting for Health spent on the core National Programme for IT contracts up to March 2007. It would keep Birmingham City Council's IT going for 26 years on its current deal.
It is also what the Department for Work and Pensions plans to spend on IT in this financial year.
Such things are hard to assess, but DWP's record on IT seems pretty good, such as when moving its Jobcentre Plus contact centres to a single system and number. It has had problems, such as its cancellation of Siemens' contract for the Customer Information System project, but on balance DWP is one of the better departments for technology use.
It is more the sheer size of the budget that is notable. DWP and HMRC together in the 2007-08 financial year spent £1.89bn on IT - more than £30 for everyone in the country - basically (with a few exceptions such as Jobcentre Plus) to administer money coming in and out of government.
One wonders if, when deciding to add new complexity to taxes and benefits, politicians pause to think about the cost of that complexity.
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Hazel's comment:
Do politicians pause to think of the cost of the complex changes that they initiate? Of course not. Plus ça change and all that.