111–120 of 162 posts
> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.
Every year my grand parents have to take a photo of themselves holding a recent newspaper with date clearly visible to whoever is managing their pension. After the internet and apps plaged the world, now they have to download an app then tilt node and wink to the camera to prove that they are alive. ("If you cannot use a phone, ask your children") I have mixed feeling about this, it's hard to say this is not degenera…
It is fun that this is even a problem in some parts of the world. In Denmark we absolutely know when people are dead and pension payments to deceased people is a non-issue.
"They moved abroad."
> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link. This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.
Mortifying
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form. From the original article: "According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ. The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm t…
> same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal. I don't follow? This is just a data quality problem. Should it be fixed? Obviously. But everyone deals with bad data. You can't fix that, you just optimize around it. The Post Office scandal was emphatically NOT about a data quality problem. It was that they were criminally prosecuting people to cover up their data quality problem. Again, everyone has bad data.
The system, administered by C[r]apita, does not log a disproved link... so we get:
DfE: "Hello, are you dead or is our wrong data match from last time still wrong?"
The repeated asking of the same question is them covering up a data quality problem!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form. From the original article: "According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ. The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm t…
> same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal. I don't follow? This is just a data quality problem. Should it be fixed? Obviously. But everyone deals with bad data. You can't fix that, you just optimize around it. The Post Office scandal was emphatically NOT about a data quality problem. It was that they were criminally prosecuting people to cover up their data quality problem. Again, everyone has bad data.
Isn't this really a process problem (i.e. a missed requirement), so that after the first instance of a queried match (for whatever reason), the unrelated death record (which will have some kind of unique document identifier or can have one derived from the information on it and date of issue) can be excluded from being matched against the subject user? (As realistically you could have 2 people with same name and DOB, it seems like the issue here is not data quality.)
It sounds like nobody created a requirement in the design stage for the ability to say "I've checked this, it's not the same person, don't flag this same death entry again". That's maybe not something envisaged at requirements time, but the need for it now becomes apparent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is fun that this is even a problem in some parts of the world. In Denmark we absolutely know when people are dead and pension payments to deceased people is a non-issue.
How do you "absolutely" know? It seems trivial to hide a death for a long period of time without a potentially extensive investigation. "They moved abroad."
I am sure that adversaries could exploit the system. But again, that is a non-issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenEdge_Advanced_Business_Lan...
Thankfully I have since moved on to greener pastures. Oddest thing about Capita is that they are able to recruit a lot of smart, competent young people, but then put them to work on maintaining the most awful systems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died. Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...
That is throwing the baby out with the bath water. The amount of fraud doesn't justify creating such burden on users. The problem is there is a market failure in the form of misaligned interests (the provider's best interest is to make the process as difficult as possible, not only to curb fraud, but also to avoid paying actual customers). This can only be fixed with government oversight and steep fines (so steep tha…
It's a system contracted out from UKGOV being administered on behalf of UKGOV. If government oversight worked, it would have worked already, surely?