Are Atos About To Drop The WCA Contract?

Reblogged from Work Test Whistleblower:

I've been pondering this question for a few weeks now.

Consider these points:

• The recent drive by the DWP to improve the 'quality' of the reports (which actually means Atos assessors having to write two reports in one, as I outlined in my post on the 26th of August) has inevitably lengthened the time it takes to carry out an assessment and write the report. Because Atos is paid per report and it pays its directly-employed assessors by the day, and because fewer reports are going to be completed by the assessor each day for the same salary, company profits are going to drop.
• By the same token, GPs who do WCAs on contract to Atos are going to see their hourly rate fall, and a fair few assessments are done by GPs working on the side. Some of them will drop out of the scheme altogether, to go and do something more profitable.
• Meanwhile, directly-employed assessors are being policed more heavily by the auditors, in order to keep the DWP happy. No one, especially someone who considers themselves to be an independent professional, likes to have someone looking over their shoulder all the time. No doubt the chronic problems with recruitment and retention of staff will have worsened over the summer, for this reason.

Then we have the DWP's enigmatic press release slipped out on the day of the royal birth. In it, the DWP said that it is bringing extra contractors in from 2014 to work on WCAs, alongside Atos. But the present contract comes to an end in 2015 anyway, which means bids for the next contract will in any event be invited in 2014, now just a few months away. I strongly suspect that, in its press release, the DWP was trying to give the false impression that it is in charge of events, when in fact a bid to continue carrying out the assessments from Atos (or indeed any other outsourcing business, given the shambolic nature of the WCA programme) is by no means certain.

For a practical example, let's look at what happened on the Isle of Man this summer:

• In May the Social Care Minister expressed his satisfaction with the WCA programme, which was being carried out by Atos as part of a six month trial.
• But by July, Atos had announced that it wasn't tendering for the contract!

Would Atos do the work for just six months - to the entire satisfaction of the Isle of Man government - then drop it, if it was all 'business as usual'?

So the £110 million question is: does Atos want to be linked with the WCA beyond next year? And if not, does anyone else?