§ Mr. Ashdownasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement on the content arid progress of his Department's local office project phase A; and if he will place a management summary of the operational requirement for this computer system in the Library.
§ Mr. WhitneyThe Department has reviewed the overall phasing of the local office project and now intends to provide in the first stage facilities for the assessment, 213W calculation and payment of supplementary benefit. Detailed work on replanning the project is in hand. The operational requirement for the computer system has not yet been completed, but we will place a summary in the Library when it is finalised.
§ Mr. Ashdownasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list and describe the on-line indexing and tracing facilities expected to be available to his Department's staff when local office project phase A has been fully implemented.
§ Mr. WhitneyIn broad terms our aim is to provide controlled facilities for authorised staff in local offices to trace records on the system by reference to national insurance numbers. The detailed facilities likely to be available under the local office project have not yet been defined. It is expected that additional facilities will be available on the departmental central index system.