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Pension Change Project (updated August 2008)
Changes in the Administration Arrangements of the National Health Service and Scottish Teachers' Superannuation Schemes: Issue 5.
In August 2005, the SPPA announced the start of a project to replace its current pensions administration system. Largely this has been driven by the UK Government’s proposals to introduce substantial reforms to the various public sector pension schemes starting in 2006. In addition, the SPPA are operating with a legacy pension administration system and the Agency desires to modernise its services and streamline its business processes to provide better customer service and more operating efficiencies.
The key aims of the Pension Change Project are to:
- Improve Customer Service
- Improve Business Processes
- Make A Positive Contribution to the Scottish Government’s Efficient Government and Best Value Agendas
- Support Scottish Government Electronic Services Delivery Objectives
In our last update in January we confirmed that the contract was agreed with Heywood Ltd to supply SPPA with their pension administration system known as AXISe. The contract commenced on 19 March 2007 and will run for a period of 8 years.
During the past 16 months Heywood Ltd and SPPA have been developing the AXISe system for the schemes which SPPA are responsible for,. The work was divided into manageable chunks which are called “workstreams” and managers were appointed from both organisations to oversee the planning, development and testing of each of these.
It was also decided that the Teachers scheme would go-live initially followed a couple of months later by the National Health Service scheme. We are fast approaching the teachers go-live date which is 16th September 2008, at this point SPPA will switch the administration of the scheme over to the Heywood AXISe system.
A Transition Plan is in place to enable the switch over process to run as smoothly as possible, this should ensure that our stakeholders do not experience any adverse change in the services we provide and we are planning for “business as usual”.
The National Health Service scheme is then planned to go-live on the 2nd December 2008, at this point our current legacy system will no longer be used to administer any of the schemes under our control and we will be fully operational on the Heywood AXISe system.
During 2009 further developments will take place to introduce new methods of exchanging data with our stakeholders with the introduction of AXISe Employer and AXISe Member services which are internet based facilities, further information and updates will be provided as we develop these services in 2009.
We have also established an employer engagement and communication workstream to review the data we currently request from employers and the formats it is sent into the Agency, by working together we hope this will reduce the work involved by the employers and ourselves and increase the accuracy and timeliness of the data required to administer our members pension records.. The workstream is being managed by Christine Ross and if you have any questions or suggestions then she can be contacted via e-mail: christine.ross@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
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Circulars were sent out on 26th August 2005 to relevant contacts in the NHS and STSS to inform them of future changes in the administration of their schemes. Please follow the appropriate link to view these circulars.