The pension dashboard project is under scrutiny from the National Audit Office in a report published yesterday, the essence of which is produced in the video at the bottom of the blog.
If you want to read the full or a concise version of the report, the link is here
For those who want the inside story on the various delays to the program, the report at least satisfies curiosity. After years of “hands off” non-management, the crunch came in February 2023 when presumably, Laura Trott decided to bite the bullet
In February 2023, a review by DWP concluded that multiple factors had contributed to the delivery problems, including a lack of skilled resources and ineffective programme governance
The DWP it seems , handed MaPS a hospital pass at outset
DWP did not have assurance at the outset that MaPS had the capacity and capability to deliver a major digital programme of the kind that would be required to implement pensions dashboards. MaPS itself assessed its ability to recruit the
required level of resource as high risk. DWP told us it had expected, however, that MaPS would be able to build the capability it needed
To begin with it decided to work with a group of industry specialists but soon grew tired of hearing them tell them they were getting it all wrong and decided to sack those who do technology for a living and replace them with some regulatory specialists
With the aim of ensuring it had sufficient oversight of programme delivery,
MaPS established a sub-committee of its board. The sub-committee was attended
by both non-executive and executive directors, and had delegated authority from
the main board to direct the work of the PDP and hold it to account. More widely,
a portfolio committee comprising representatives from the various organisations
involved in delivering pensions dashboards, including MaPS, DWP, the Financial
Conduct Authority and The Pensions Regulator, was set up with a focus on
cross-cutting dependencies and risks to delivery.
Is it any surprise that the National Audit Office now consider the dashboard has been subject to governance failures.
The path less trodden
What the industry experts had been telling MaPS – prior to the inception of the PDP was what it had learned from open banking , namely that by delivering certain high level objectives and standards, the Government could have put the ball in the pension industry’s hand to deliver the dashboard, just as open banking had delivered us online banking and fast payments. The Treasury had originally promoted this model in 2016, the DWP knew better.
This blog has repeatedly warned the DWP , MaPS and PDP that by managing the project “in-house”, they were out of their depth and would add to a long list of Government failures. While there are more pension funds than banks, the principals behind Open Banking are the principals behind the pension dashboard, the public just want to have online access to their information (including the stuff they’ve lost).
Instead of having open pensions, we now have a crazy amount of regulation and nothing to show for it. Costs are up, benefits down and what was envisaged by the Treasury in 2016 (and by the DWP’s Pension Minister thereafter) as a 2019 launch has slipped to a November 2026 launch.
Last week, the FCA had to provide additional rules to allow pension schemes to be only 80% ready by their much delayed guidance connection date. The tail is now wagging the dog, schemes are holding Government to ransom and having given away any pretence that they are in control , the DWP is at the mercy of pension schemes who are fed up with the cost and delays inflicted upon them.
Business as usual for dashboard is now pencilled in as March 2027 but we have precious little to show for the money spent other than a lot of reassurance from PDP that everything is progressing as it should.
Type “dashboard” into the search facility on this blog to get to older posts. I went to my first dashboard event in 2014 but had been promoting combined pension statements in 2009. We have neither combined pension statements nor dashboards and my bet with the then CEO of MaPS that we will not have a fully operating dashboard by my 67th birthday (Nov 2028) is in the money.
The NAO’s report has some lessons for the DWP to learn, they focus on the handover of projects such as this to arms length bodies such as MaPS. I was at the chaotic handover meeting in DWP’s offices in 2019 (the first dot on the chart above). MaPS weren’t ready and I told them so. They didn’t listen , nor did the DWP.
Despite the total failure of MaPS , PDP and DWP to deliver, the lessons to be learned seem to be how to do the same next time . Meantime , we are able to do our open banking as a matter of course.
