Richard James, PDP programme director reflects on the achievements presented in the progress update report and looks forward to the next few months’ activity.
PDP’s latest progress update report published on 26 October. I would invite everyone to read it, as it provides a great overview of what the programme has achieved over the last six months. It’s been a productive period, the highlight of which has to be the appointment of Capgemini with Origo, to deliver our central digital infrastructure. This is the culmination of months of hard work, consultation and information gathering to feed into the requirements and a highly-efficient procurement process.
All this activity means the programme is moving forward at pace. We’ve completed our preparation and moved into the develop and test phase, where the digital architecture takes shape. Digital architecture is no different to any other construction: the foundations take time but once they’re in, the build itself is relatively speedy.
Pensions dashboards construction underway
We’re moving fast towards the stage where pensions dashboards become a reality. And as we take these steps, we need the rest of the pensions industry to keep pace with us. We expect DWP to consult on regulations this winter, which are likely to come into force later in 2022. This doesn’t leave much time before the start of compulsory onboarding for some organisations in 2023.
I cannot emphasise strongly enough the need to take action now. There’s plenty you can and should do to prepare before regulations compel you to do so. If you’re a data provider, do you want to use an ISP to connect to the dashboard ecosystem? What state is your data in? Have you got a team and plan in place to prepare for connection?
We continue to publish information to support organisations that will need to connect to dashboards on our website. The data providers hub and corresponding dashboard providers hub contain the latest information, including steps to connection and further detail on the functionality of the pensions dashboards ecosystem.
Our Head of Onboarding, Paul Noone, is available to meet with organisations to discuss the programme and the process. If you’re interested in taking up that offer, contact us on: infopdp@maps.org.uk.
We will provide further information on technical requirements towards the end of the year, as we learn more from the work Capgemini is doing, as well as gaining further insight from testing the systems. We will share what we learn on the provider hubs on a regular basis, to help you get ready in the easiest way possible.
Moving forward into ecosystem testing
So what’s next? We’re coming towards the end of our discovery phase with Capgemini, where we’ve worked through some of the technical issues around the build. We’ve got our volunteer data providers lined up to take part in our alpha testing phase and we’re close to finalising selection of potential dashboard providers to join them.
These organisations are on an accelerated path to connection, proving it is possible. We’ll work with these volunteer data and dashboard providers to ensure they’ve got everything in place to begin the onboarding process, once the digital architecture is sufficiently advanced.
These volunteers will help us refine the onboarding process, to make it quicker and easier for the organisations that follow. We’ll be testing, refining and iterating the digital ecosystem and its processes throughout, to ensure that by the time dashboards are publicly available they’re in the best shape possible, so that dashboard users can find their pensions online, safely and all in one place.