Guidance

LA Welfare Direct lite 3/2019

Updated 4 March 2024

Contact

Queries about the:

• technical content of this bulletin, contact details are given at the end of each article
• general content and distribution of this bulletin, contact
  

[email protected]

Who should read

All Housing Benefit staff

Action

For information

Update: Customer Information System Interest Automation

1. We last updated you about the setting and general maintenance of the Customer Information System (CIS) (HB) and Council Tax Reduction (CTR) interests in September’s LAWD9/2019 bulletin.

2. Since then, the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWPs) Housing Delivery Division’s (HDDs) LA Data Sharing (LADS) Delivery Team has continued to work with local authority (LA) Software Suppliers to develop and introduce the automated process for the setting and general maintenance of the CIS HB and CTR interests.

3. We have completed our connectivity and solution testing with the LA software suppliers and have successfully on-boarded 4 LAs, namely East Riding of Yorkshire, Gateshead, Durham and Calderdale. These LAs are all now live using the CIS Interest Automation Service.

4. As we have assurance that the solutions developed by each of the LA software suppliers are working effectively, we have started to approach more LAs for the next phase of rollout where we will gradually increase the number of LAs being on-boarded.

5. Your LA IT Single Point of Contact (SPOC) will receive direct contact from the project when your LA has completed the activity for the next phase and we will continue to work with your LA IT SPOC as each LA is ready to on-board. We plan to have the CIS Interest Automation Guidance for LAs available on Glasscubes imminently.

6. You should be assured that this project will deliver significant improvements for LAs in the maintenance of the CIS HB and CTR interests; reducing nugatory alerts and ensuring more of the genuine change alerts are received.

7. We will continue to keep you updated with progress. However, in the meantime, if you have any questions you can email:
[email protected]

Searchlight

8. LAs currently use a Standard Enquiry Facility to access and view the data held on CIS. As part of the CIS remediation programme DWP has modernised this facility.

9. The new application is called Searchlight, which is a more user friendly platform to view the data currently held on CIS. This has already been rolled out in DWP and the feedback from users is positive.

10. Rollout to LAs is due to start at the end of April 2019 and will be completed by the end of May 2019.

11. DWP has recently provided direct communications to LA contacts asking them to complete connectivity testing to the new Searchlight URL. Thank you to those LAs who have already taken this action and confirmed connectivity. For those who have yet to complete the test we ask that you do so by 29 March 2019.

12. DWP are also undertaking a user test with a small number of LAs to feed into the guidance and implementation products.

13. We will continue to provide regular updates via the usual communication channels. In the meantime, if you have any questions please contact:
[email protected]

Transfer Your File update and actions for LAs

14. As advised in February’s LAWD2/2019 bulletin and on Glasscubes, DWP continue to progress the development of Transfer Your File (TYF); an in-house replacement for the Data Hub.

Connectivity testing

15. On 28 February 2019 we issued the TYF URLs to all LAs in order to carry out the initial connectivity testing. At this point we only need you to confirm connectivity to the URL http://tyf.integr-prd.dwpcloud.uk. The other address we provided at that time is the one you will use at go live.

16. Once again, many thanks to those LAs who have already taken this action and confirmed connectivity. For those who have yet to complete the test we ask that you do so by 29 March 2019.

Authentication

17. The Employee Authentication Service (EAS), will be the authentication route for accessing TYF. In order to effectively manage the service, as a minimum, each LA will require two EAS Organisation Administrator (OAs) or Service Access Manager (SAMs) allocated to the TYF service. DWP recommend that LAs use existing EAS OAs or SAMs.

18. If LAs would prefer to set up a new specific TYF EAS OA and/or SAM, although possible, there will be a restriction of five new EAS staff that you can allocate to the TYF solution. These five will need to include the two new OAs if you do not use existing staff.

19. You must email: [email protected] with the names of the TYF EAS and/or SAMs OAs (indicating if they are existing EAS users) and their unique identifiers by 3 April 2019.

20. DWP will provide access to the TYF service to the identified OAs and/or SAM centrally for rollout. The OAs and SAMs will be responsible for setting up their TYF users once notified by DWP to do so.

21. Certificates will not be required to access TYF.

Rollout

22. The roll out of TYF will begin in early April 2019 with a small number of LAs and gradually increase so that all LAs are on board by the end of May 2019.

Machine to machine transfers

23. For those LAs who currently use an automated method (in other words, a machine user) to transfer files from the Data Hub to your LA systems, you should note that there will be no facility to auto-transfer files in TYF from machine to machine at the live rollout. However, it is a DWP priority to provide this functionality once initial rollout is completed.

Next steps

24. We will issue user guidance and implementation checklists to all LAs shortly.

25. Regular updates will be provided through the usual communication channels. In the meantime, if you have questions please email:
[email protected]

Stop Notice/MGP1: email address action for LAs

26. As you will know the removal of the GCSX suffix from LA email addresses is fast approaching. To ensure your LA can continue to receive HB Stop Notices and send MGP1s to the Universal Credit team you should send your replacement email address to: [email protected] by the end of March 2019, if you have not yet done so.