The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) plans to introduce “more automation” to its telephone services and boost its digital and in-person support
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has shared plans to update its systems to help its most vulnerable
According to a report by Public Technology, the benefits department plans to introduce “more automation” to its telephone services and boost its digital and in-person support. The department’s increased use of automation aims to help it “identify and provide improved support” to its most vulnerable service users.
The DWP’s permanent secretary, Sir Peter Schofield, says one of the primary ways of doing this would be to introduce a “conversational platform” which hopes to improve the allocation of calls to DWP helplines.
In a letter to MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Schofield said that the system “will modernise DWP’s telephony services using voice-led technology that can assimilate what a caller is telling us, routing their call to the team best-placed to support them”.
Sir Peter Schofield said the service was already “performing well” in areas where it is deployed, added: “And we plan to roll it out across more of our telephony lines in the coming months.”
Alongside the changes to the telephone services, he also noted that the department was “seeking to simplify access to other services” through better use of tech. This includes things such as converting customers’ inbound calls into text, which he claims can help in “identifying serious harm risks.”
The department chief also pointed to the use of AI to process the 25,000 pieces of correspondence received by the DWP each day. He added: “Artificial intelligence technology [can] allow us to digitally identify whether a customer may need support from what they have written and how they have written it.”
The DWP has also created an “assisted digital survey [for] auto-generating barriers” a customer may have in communicating with the department. To identify how else it can improve services, the department is using feedback from users, particularly for Universal Credit and other working-age benefits. From this, the DWP now also offers an “additional support area in UC [for] recording up-to-date customer support needs in one place”.
Sir Peter Schofield also noted that elsewhere, the DWP was ramping up work on collaborating with other government departments, including HMRC, UKHSA, and the DVLA, to improve services for DWP customers.
The DWP boss cited several major work programmes through which the department delivers service upgrades. These include the Health Transformation Programme and the Service Modernisation Programme. The health programme updates aim to simplify and reduce the burden of the application process, and the work on the modernisation programme aims to “make services easier to access and engage with for customers with additional needs”.
Alongside these projects, the department is also working on “contact centre modernisation, delivering [a] new telephony platform over a seven-year period, representing a £200million investment”. In addition to its use of tech, “the department continues to protect and improve non-digital channels for those customers who need to interact with us by phone, post, or in person”.
He added: “We are testing new ways to offer a more flexible DWP Visiting Service, including a face-to-face service in co-located premises. An example of how this works in practice is our joint work with the Ministry of Justice and Probation Services though our Innovation Hubs.
“Working holistically with partners including the Salford Foundation, we can ensure DWP benefits are in place to prevent, in some cases, re-offending and help people get closer to work, secure housing and improve their lives. This joined-up approach is improving trust between customers, organisations and wider partners.”