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There must have been many sets of crossed fingers in 100 Parliament Street last Monday before the Covid-19 compensation scheme went live. However extensive the testing which has been done in advance, nothing can prepare an organisation for the first time a new site goes live. This was, of course, no ordinary site. When the chancellor announced the scheme it was estimated that it would cover one in ten UK employees and, as we now know, the demand has been much higher. So the success of the new portal was absolutely critical to the economic wellbeing of the county. Few organisations can ever have been faced with getting such an important system up and running with such short notice.
The sighs of relief within HMRC when it became clear the launch had gone smoothly were almost palpable. At the time of writing the system is still working robustly and employers have started to receive their grants.
Not everything has been perfect. Parts of the system are a bit clunky and there is more manual keying than is ideal but these are minor irritations which should not detract from a proper appreciation of what has been achieved here. HMRC’s success in previous IT rollouts has been patchy to say the least and I know that many people were predicting that this new system was a disaster waiting to happen.
Thankfully for all of us they were proved wrong. It is amazing what can be done under pressure when backs are to the wall. Here’s hoping that once we return to normality – whatever that might be – HMRC’s success here will rub off on its other major IT projects.
