May 12, 2008

Lie Detectors For Social Security Claimants?

This is from The Inquirer, a British newspaper, repeat, a British newspaper:
THE GOVERNMENT has put £1.5million up for another round of lie detector test pilots for social security helplines run by local authorities in the UK. ...

The DWP [agency administering British Social Security?] said today in a statement that "initial results" from the seven pilots it has conducted across seven local authorities had been "successful". It provided no other details but said the results justified another round of pilot projects with another fifteen local authorities. ...

The software, licensed through Capita by Digilog UK, which bought the UK licence from Nemesysco, an Israeli software developer, attaches risk scores to people after analysing their voices on the telephone. It will alert a call handler with a "pip" and an on-screen assessment if it thinks it has detected a "high-risk" person. According to Capita, half the people it assesses as high risk turn out to be no risk at all.

Harrow Council said today it had saved an estimated £420,000 in the year since it first installed the software. This was derived from a DWP estimate of the amount a person would typically claim on benefit.

The figure was calculated on the assumption that 132 people who refused to complete the voice-risk analysis assessment would otherwise have tried to cheat the system; and that 500 people who, though they had been flagged as low risk, had declared their personal circumstances had changed and no longer needed benefits would also have otherwise attempted to cheat the system.

Out of 1559 benefits claimants processed by the lie detection system, 118 were flagged as high risk. Just 24 of those, or 1.5 per cent, had their benefits decreased as a result of the intrusion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Can we sttach them managers when giving appraisals.