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5.1 The Operations Branch employs most of the Agency's staff and it is responsible for the core business task of administering the public service pension, premature retirement compensation and injury benefit schemes for which the Secretary of State has administrative responsibility. The contact its staff have with scheme members (teachers and college lecturers, doctors, nurses and all groups employed by the NHS and others) and their employers, is the main way in which views on the service provided by the Agency are formed. The Branch handled a heavy workload in 1998-99 against a background of IT problems. (Annexes A and B) |
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Alistair
Small
Director of Operations |
New IT
5.2 As in 1997-98, the project to develop, test and install a new integrated pensions administration and payments system, in partnership with McDonnell Information Systems, remained a top priority during 1998-99.
5.3 Although the NHS Scheme operating system was able to go live in January 1998 prior to the decommissioning of The Scottish Office's mainframe system not all of the new system's operational elements were complete at that time. A significant number of key functions had still to go live and others were not fully operational. Finalising the development of these key functions as well as a number of less important support elements was therefore the Branch's key task in 1998-99. Despite working against a background of changes, including a Technology Refresh exercise which was carried out throughout The Scottish Office, its consequential integration with SOPA's pensions administration and payments system and significant legislative changes affecting in particular the calculation of transfer values, good progress was made with most of the more important elements now operational.
5.4 Considerable, and successful, effort was also required to avoid the problems experienced with the payroll sub-system in May and June 1997, when substantial numbers of pensioners received incorrect payments, and in May 1998, when payments were delayed. There will be no problems in May 1999.
Year 2000 Compliance
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5.5 The Agency committed itself to ensuring all its critical computer systems were tested for Year 2000 compliance before 31 March 1999. Accordingly a series of tests has been conducted which confirmed that the pension administration and payment systems will function through and beyond the Millennium date change. This work was the subject of an independent audit, which reported favourably. Recognising that the systems are still under development and that a new processor will be installed, further tests will be carried out in August 1999 to ensure that all is still well after which a moratorium on further development will be put in place until early January 2000. |
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Malcolm
de Lorey
IT Project Manager |
5.6 Although unlikely, there is always the possibility that despite the above preparations some parts of the systems might fail or malfunction and contingency plans have been prepared to ensure that the impact on the Agency's customers is minimised. In particular plans have been made to ensure that the Agency will be able to continue to make the pension and related payments for which it bears a direct responsibility.
Case-Work
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5.7 Despite all these problems, the day to day work on pension and compensation awards and payments, transfers to and from other schemes, refunds of contributions and dealing with a range of general enquiries was maintained, in a number of areas by reverting temporarily to manual processing. The types and numbers of transactions undertaken, statutory instruments made, staff numbers, running costs, overall unit costs are summarised in Annex A. The numbers of members and beneficiaries and transactions processed in 1998-99 are broken down by scheme in Annex B. |
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Gordon
Taylor
NHS Scheme Manager |
BUSINESS STATISTICS 1993-99
5.8 The targets set for the year were tough even without the complication of continuing IT problems. Against the background of a difficult year staff performed very well indeed in achieving the results set out in the table at Section 4.
Mis-selling of Personal Pensions
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5.9 The review by personal pension providers of cases where mis-selling of personal pensions was a possibility continued to involve a substantial amount of staff time. Approximately 10,000 priority cases have now been actioned since the review began. Mis-selling will continue to be a major task in 1999-2000 with the start of stage 2 of the review, involving non-priority cases expected to begin to impact in June/July 1999. |
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Payments and Receipts
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5.10 Operations Branch is also responsible for estimating and monitoring the monies voted by Parliament to meet the financial responsibilities of the NHS and Teachers' Schemes, and to ensure that these are sufficient for their purposes. Employee and employers' pension contributions are also accounted for. Total payments in 1998-99 amounted to some £726 million and total receipts to some £426 million. |
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