PRaP Update

For those who haven't encountered it, Provider Referrals and Payments (PRaP) is the automated system that will replace SL2s with the introduction of FND, getting rid of the paper-based referrals, claims, and other paperwork processes that have bedevilled employment providers for so many years. We've covered its development previously in this article.

After some months without any more news emerging, the DWP's PRaP team presented at the ALP Conference today. With screenshots and everything! The intemperate tone of the original article notwithstanding, its criticisms of PRaP's design have been partly addressed in the months since it was first published.

Many of the basic concepts of PRaP - giving providers access to a database of referred customers, allowing them to click a button to let the DWP know when someone turns up, leaves, and starts a job - are a vast improvement on the bales of SL2 paperwork and painstaking reconciliations in current welfare-to-work delivery. Given how much money and how many staff are involved in handling paperwork on existing New Deal contracts, the savings from the system will go some way to making delivery substantially cheaper all by themselves.

The major issue is the lack of link-up with providers' in-house databases. The rough solution to this appears to be as follows:

1. An export button has now been provided, that will allow providers to download a customer's details to a file
2. This can then be imported into the in-house database, which will allow the provider to keep more detailed information and share it with subcontractors
3. All further customer activity is recorded using the in-house database
4. Once a job outcome or completion is achieved, the provider has an administrator sitting in an office, with the job of manually entering the outcome details in PRaP
5. The provider will be able to check whether all the manual transfers of data have been carried out properly by pulling off Management Information reports from PRaP and comparing them to the figures from the in-house database

This is far from a perfect solution, but the 'export' button is a vast improvement on the original system, which would have required an army of people typing information from one computer window into another. There still seems to be no good reason why the web interface was created in the first place, when the entire process could be handled by the in-house databases using a simple communication protocol.

Other points from the presentation:

• Provider authentication for the database will be through the Government Gateway
• All subsequent contracts following FND will use PRaP, but existing contracts will NOT move across
• The system will continue to develop over the coming years in response to feedback from providers
• Only primes will be able to access PRaP
• All providers will need to pass a security check to gain access to the PRaP system
• Payments will be authorised and made on a daily basis in contracts under PRaP, with a service fee rolled in once a month

Gratuitous side rumour

There have been reports that the FAM teams are shutting up shop in July, which fits with the introduction of an automated checking system for job outcomes. No confirmation on this though.