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The Achilles' heel of scale service design in social security administration: The case of the U nited K ingdom's U niversal C redit
Author(s) -
Seddon John,
O'Donovan Brendan
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
international social security review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.349
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1468-246X
pISSN - 0020-871X
DOI - 10.1111/issr.12000
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , service (business) , headline , administration (probate law) , work (physics) , scale (ratio) , set (abstract data type) , business , marketing , computer science , advertising , engineering , political science , law , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics , programming language
This article takes a critical view of the U nited K ingdom government's design for the delivery of the U niversal Credit ( UC ) benefit reforms. It is argued that the UC is destined to fail because of the policy's extension into specifying the means (“digital by default”) of delivery for such services. The authors argue that an unseen but ubiquitous set of “scale” management assumptions has been allowed to infiltrate the means by which the government intends to enact its headline policy objective to “make work pay”. Following Seddon's “ V anguard M ethod”, a practical example of how a better service was designed in a local authority housing benefits service is then examined. Results from this service include being able to deal with up to 50 per cent more demand, with fewer resources, in half the official target time. Finally, the article will conclude with a call for more evidence‐based policy.