Document Purpose
This document was produced by the FAME Programme to provide guidance and practical examplesto all Local Authorities/Partner Agencies for an implementation of Multi-Agency working. All documents are the property of FAME National Project, and to access these documents you have agreed to the terms and conditions set out in the accessing of these products from the FAME website.
For a further description of this document please see the Product Definition below stating exactly what the product is. Formore in depth explanation and guidance please see the FAME "How to Implement and Sustain a Multi-Agency Environment".
Specification of Requirements:
the technical and process specifications to support the development and implementation of a working solution.
Table of Contents
Management Summary 1
1 Introduction 2
2 Housing Benefit Status Enquiries Process 3
3 Future Process 5
3.1 Process Overview 6
3.2 Use Case Model using RSL System 6
3.2.1 Search Clients Details 7
3.2.2 Review Clients Case 7
3.2.3 Activate Housing Benefit Status Enquiry 7
3.2.4 View Housing Benefit Status Reponse 7
3.2.5 Logon ExSEL Partner 7
3.3 Use Case Model using ExSEL Partner 8
3.3.1 Activate Housing Benefit Status Enquiry 9
3.3.2 View Housing Benefit Status Reponse 9
3.3.3 Logon ExSEL Partner 9
3.4 Actors 9
3.4.1 Benefits System (Academy HB) 10
3.4.2 Dcoument Imaging System (DIPS) 10
3.4.3 Other Agencies 10
3.4.4 RSL Agent 10
3.4.5 RSL System (Comino) 10
3.5 Housing Benefit Logical Class Model 11
3.5.1 Benefits Award Class 11
3.5.2 Claim Document Class 12
3.5.3 Housing Benefit Claim Class 12
3.5.4 Person Class 13
3.5.5 RSL Property Class 13
4 Benefits 14
5 System Outline 15
5.1 High Level Architecture 15
5.1.1 Example process supported by the proposed architecture 20
5.2 Data Volumes 23
5.3 Service Level Agreements 23
6 Message Broker – ExSEL 24
6.1.1 ExSEL Broker 24
6.1.2 ExSEL Partner 25
6.1.3 ExSEL Director 25
6.1.4 ExSEL Gateways 25
6.2 Housing Association (HA or RSL) Systems 26
6.2.1 Broomleigh Technical Environment 26
6.3 CAPITA Academy HB system 26
6.4 ANITE Document Image Processing System 26
6.5 Citizen Advice Bureaux (CAB) 27
7 Approach 28
8 Data Sharing Protocol 29
8.1 Purpose 30
8.2 Legislation 31
8.3 Scope 31
8.4 Objectives 31
8.5 Using and Sharing Personal Information 31
8.6 Processing and sharing 31
8.7 Consent 32
8.8 Security Policies, Procedures and Access 32
8.8.1 Individual requirements 32
8.8.2 Security requirements 33
8.8.3 Access 33
8.8.4 Breaches of the Data Sharing Protocol 34
8.9 Governance, Management 34
8.10 Compliance with Legislation and other Guidelines 34
9 Data Protection Act 35
Appendices 36
A Minutes of meeting with RSL 36
LBL ISA Business Case Version 1.0 041001 1
Management Summary
The key objective of the FAME programme is to establish a framework for inter-working between government (local and national) authorities and the agencies they use to provide services to the citizen. The partners involved within this strand along side London Borough of Bromley are RSL’s operating in the Borough, Citizens Advice Bureau and other voluntary organisations. CIBER UK is the Technology Partner for this strand.
The Housing and Benefits Project will be comprised of several related initiatives designed with a common purpose of improving the information flow and collaborative working in the Housing and Benefits arena. Whilst addressing different problems, they all share a common set of goals;
· Being of national significance
· Delivering real business benefits
· Creating innovation in information sharing
The Housing and Benefits Inter-working project was to evaluate the technical aspects of integrating the respective applications to allow for straight through processing of the Housing Benefits Status enquiry process and provide real time information, with the above criteria in mind.
Automating the current process will allow for,
1) RSL’s to initiate requests Housing Benefit Status enquiries from their own applications. The facilities would include:
a. Integration with Broomleigh’s HA CRM system
b. Integration with London Borough of Bromley’s Benefits departments systems Academy and Document Imaging systems
2) Allow other agencies (E.g. Citizen Advice Bureau, Age Concern and Department of Work and Pensions) to be proactive within the process to assist their client with concise and accurate information
3) It addresses in itself a high profile business issue with national applicability; namely the aim to provide the RSL’s with real-time information on a clients Housing Benefits claim and/or payment. This will minimise the manual effort required at the Benefits office, also accurate and consistent responses.
This document provides a summary of the investigations into and analysis of the Housing Benefits Interworking process, the role played by the facilities identified and the recommendations for a phased approach to this element of inter-working.
1 Introduction
Nationally, the Housing Benefits process has been described as being in "crisis" and even in "meltdown". Long delays in making payments are creating hardship for tenants and financial headaches for Residential Service Landlords (RSL’s) and other landlords, who rely on prompt payment. Let alone the administrative burden on the Local Authorities to ensure claims are processed efficiently, effectively and on time.
The Housing Benefits claim process has been identified as an important area where improvements can be gained and has been included as one of the key project strands within the FAME programme. The FAME objectives are to ensure that government (national and local) with supporting agencies work together and share information to ensure a seamless service to the citizen.
This proposal addresses part of the scope of the FAME Housing and Benefits strand. The strand as a whole addresses the following,
Þ To support Government aims for housing stock transfers through meeting the needs for joined up service delivery to housing and benefits clients who include many of the most disadvantaged in the community.
Þ Housing & benefits represent some of the largest areas of expenditure on local authority services and considerable additional cost and bureaucracy is incurred at present due to unstructured manual processes that support essential service-critical interactions between these services.
Areas to be addressed by this project strand will include, for example, joining-up benefits administration, partnerships with Residential Service Landlords (RSL’s), Local Authorities Housing departments, liaison with voluntary services etc.
Specifically, deployment will include multi-agency approaches to services across local authority housing and social care client functions, RSL’s, benefits service client units and benefits service contractors; including the matching of requirements with vacancies, checking benefits eligibility and carrying out appropriate checks for suitability of accommodation status checks for benefits .
This outlines the system proposal for automating the Housing Benefit Status enquiry and specifically addresses the integration of systems concerned with Housing Benefits.
2 Housing Benefit Status Enquiries Process
The Housing Benefit Status Enquiries process is currently managed and administered by the respective RSL’s, Liberata and other respective agencies. The process is triggered by the RSL’s requiring information on the status of their client’s Housing Benefits claim/payments. This is normally initiated as the RSL’s have not received rent payment from their client, or their has been a change in circumstance.
Using the ExSEL system the RSL’s would send an enquiry to the department managing Benefits (Liberata). Using their respective systems Academy HB for the management of the Housing Benefits claims and Document Imaging Process system (DIPS) for the management of correspondences with the client and other agencies, the Housing Benefit status can be determined.
The current process is manually intensive and raises a number of issues,
· Timing of responses to the initial enquiry is long and not immediate
· The responses received usually require follow-up and/or not consistent
· Number of Housing Benefit enquiries per day are 20 to 30 but some may be processed by telephone
3 Future Process
The objective of the Housing and Benefit interworking project is to automate the Housing Benefit Status Enquiry responses. The current process is reliant upon key agents who receive the request and then manually gather the information to respond back to the initial request. The response is normally within 3-5 working days from the initial request. The agents would normally batch the responses back.
The future process has been outlined to reduce the time taken to receive responses to the initial request by providing straight through processing. The process will provide a mechanism to interrogate the respective systems with information about the client and also pre-set question(s). If the client and case record has been identified in the systems then a preset response with the respective information will be sent back.
As detailed above the number of transactions average 20 Housing Benefit Status Enquiries per day. But once the new system is implemented and in live use then the number of transaction is likely to increase.
3.1 Process Overview
3.2 Use Case Model using RSL System
Figure 1 : Housing Benefit Status (RSL System)
3.2.1 Search Clients Details
Purpose:
Identify the clients details to view the status of the Housing Benefit Claim or the status of the clients payments schedule/details
3.2.2 Review Clients Case
Purpose:
Assess the status of the clients records, payments etc
3.2.3 Activate Housing Benefit Status Enquiry
Purpose:
RSL agents identifies issues with the clients records and request for the status on the Housing Benefit.
3.2.4 View Housing Benefit Status Reponse
Purpose:
The results of the enquiry are received and the RSL agent views the information received.
3.2.5 Logon ExSEL Partner
Purpose:
Logon to ExSEL partner system with user-id and password.
3.3 Use Case Model using ExSEL Partner
Figure 2 : Housing Benefit System (ExSEL Partner)
3.3.1 Activate Housing Benefit Status Enquiry
Purpose:
RSL agents identifies issues with the clients records and request for the status on the Housing Benefit.
3.3.2 View Housing Benefit Status Reponse
Purpose:
The results of the enquiry are received and the RSL agent views the information received.
3.3.3 Logon ExSEL Partner
Purpose:
Logon to ExSEL partner system with user-id and password.
3.4 Actors
This diagram represents the actors that interact within the Housing Benefit Status Enquiry process.
Figure 3 : Actors
3.4.1 Benefits System (Academy HB)
Purpose:
This actor represents the system that maintain the claimants details of their Housing Benefit. The responsibility is to provide part or all the information of the claim to the RSL when an Housing Benefit enquiry has been requested.
3.4.2 Document Imaging System (DIPS)
Purpose:
The purpose of this actor is to maintain the correspondences that have been sent to the client or received from the client.
3.4.3 Other Agencies
Purpose:
This actor represents Other agencies who also require information on the claimants Housing Benefit Status enquiry.
E.g.
a) RSL's who do not have the volume/capacity to amaned their systems for requesting and receiving responses
b) Citizen Advice Bureau, Age Concern etc
3.4.4 RSL Agent
Purpose:
This actor represents an agent from the Resident Service Landlords (RSL). They have the responsibility to investigate the the status of a clients Housing Benefit Status Enquiry.
3.4.5 RSL System (Comino)
Purpose:
This actor respresents the system that will be responsible for initiating the Housing Benefit Status enquiry and then displaying the response
3.5 Housing Benefit Logical Class Model
Figure 4 : Housing Benefit Logical Class Model
3.5.1 Benefits Award Class
Purpose:
This class represents the payments due to the claimant once the claim has been successfully process.
Benefits Award Attributes
Attribute / TypeAward Start Date / private :char
Award End Date / private :char
Award Amount / private :char
3.5.2 Claim Document Class
Purpose:
this class represent the documentation that is required to be sent or recieved by the client with respect to their claim/payments
Claim Document Attributes
Attribute / TypeDocument Code / private :char
Document Name / private :char
Document Type / private :char
3.5.3 Housing Benefit Claim Class
Purpose:
This class represents the details of the Housing Benefit Claim
Housing Benefit Claim Attributes
Attribute / TypeClaim Reference Number / private :char
Claim Start Date / private :char
Claim End Date / private :char
3.5.4 Person Class
Purpose:
Class represent the Person object
Person Attributes
Attribute / TypeName / private :char
Date Of Birth
«date» / private :int
National Insurance Number / private :char
3.5.5 RSL Property Class
Purpose:
This class represents the property address to which the person is a tenant of.
RSL Property Attributes
Attribute / TypeAddress Line 1 / private :char
Address Line 2 / private :char
Address Line 3 / private :char
Address Line 4 / private :char
Post Code / private :char
4 Benefits
Benefits of the new proposed solution are,
No. / Benefit / Description /1 / Reduced response times / The automated solution is to provide instant responses to the initial enquiry. Currently it the departments have upto 3-5 working days to respond to the initial enquiry. The proposed solution will save time. The agents can then handle other potentially more complex queries.
2 / Consistency of responses / By providing the RSL’s or other agencies with the facility to ask standard questions. The system will be setup to provide standard agreed responses to the query. This would minimise then the number of follow-up queries currently being processes by the RSL’s and agencies.
3 / Increased usage of the application / Currently, majority of enquiries are completed by telephone. If the agreed set of questions, generate the right level of responses, then the confidence level in the system will grow and increase the usage.
4 / RSL’s, initially Broomleigh, will be able to trigger the request through their application. / The users will not have to use another application/system to generate the enquiry and receive the response. They’ll be able to request and view information within their own application.
5 / Deployment of other RSL’s Interface file can be managed through the CSV gateway. / The developing the CSV Gateway will allow other RSL’s to use the same mechanism gateway and schema.
6 / Other agencies (e.g. CAB, Age Concern etc) will use the same application / Other agencies will continue to use the same ExSEL application, therefore training and deployment will be very limited.
5 System Outline
This section provides a high level architecture to support the process of Housing Benefit Status Enquiries. The major components in this architecture are ExSEL, which is a message broker designed specifically for local government requirements and the existing systems in each of the organisations, agencies and departments involved in this aspect of the evictions process.