4.10 The Agency was tasked by the Home Office to deliver a high quality, low cost service within a tight timescale and consistent with the Government's modernisation agenda. Initial research with stakeholders in spring 2000 pointed to telephone and on-line applications with this aim in mind. In early 2001, the Agency realised from their further consultation with customers via Roadshows that a paper channel was needed as well, even though there were risks associated with introducing such a channel late in the development cycle. Other risks which were recognised and debated with customers at the time were that paper forms are error prone and higher cost.
4.11 Capita and the Agency were initially expecting that between 70 and 85 per cent of applications would come in by phone to the call centre. In practice, however, over 80 per cent of applicants have sent in paper application forms. The Agency responded by requesting Capita to adapt their processes to reflect customer preferences. The decision to introduce paper forms was taken in July 2001 and commercial considerations agreed with Capita by September 2001.
4.12 Capita expressed reservations about instigating a fundamental change when system and process design was well advanced to meet the agreed telephone application route, pointing out potential operational problems. They nevertheless agreed the change commercially and contractually in September 2001. Upon go-live, they transferred Call Centre staff to key in applications in bulk from paper forms, but neither the system design nor the skills of staff adequately matched this change in process. These problems were compounded by errors by applicants (as high as 50 per cent in mid-April 2002 with multiple errors) and this resulted in low productivity. These problems did not show up during the pilot testing phase. Once Capita recognised the problems, they provided a solution in six weeks using Optical Character Recognition scanning in Liverpool and professional data entry systems subcontracted to Hays plc. The backlog was cleared within eight weeks.