Question: when is a national scandal neither a scandal, nor a scoop, nor a matter of the slightest significance? Answer: When it is the Child Support Agency.
This month we have been led to believe that after a decade of disasters, this ill-fated and unsupported agency's mangled information systems were compounded by a history of symbiosis, in which some managers encouraged staff to use the agency's chaos as a resource, as a way of delaying or losing cases.
The story had it that research revealing yet another crisis at the CSA was quietly sequestered by the Department of Work and Pensions until it was disinterred by the forensic journal, Computer Weekly. But that wasn't the real story. The research carried out by Adele Atkinson at Bristol University revealed a different and much more poignant narrative.
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