The thing is, Dashboard is an IT project. 

Having been involved in the Pensions Dashboard project in one way or another for a long time, more than two Olympics ago in fact, I am struck by one thing above all.   

Everybody looks at it as a policy, or engagement or data issue.  Which it is of course.  But I see very few people discussing quite what an enormous IT project it is.  And that there is a lot a work still to do. 

This is understandable given that the phrase “massive government IT project” is not necessarily one that instils confidence.  But we need to accept that’s what it is.  Sort of.  

The reason we all think Dashboard is such a good idea is how wide ranging the UK pensions world is.  From a workplace pensions with a major name Life Companies or a Masterstrust,  a SIPP on a robo platform, through old private and current public sector DB schemes and of course state pension.  People will often have all sorts of pensions run by all sorts of organisations.  Seeing it all in one place is a terribly good idea.   

But of course this self same reason to have Dashboard, people have all sorts of pensions with all sorts of organisations, makes the IT really quite a challenge.   

There are various estimates of how many different administrators of Pensions there are in the UK.  It gets complicated because many DB schemes will use the same admin providers but then some go it alone and there are some strange old arrangements in place on legacy books.  But for argument let’s use a middling sort of number and say 200.   

That’s 200 different organisations that the Pensions Dashboard Programme (PDP) have to connect to their finder service, check the connectivity for, ensure security compliance etc.   No wonder the PDP are so keen on Integrated Service Providers (ISPs),  The aim is will bring this number down from 200 to a far more manageable one.  Certainly for smaller pensions administrators the case for using an ISP is pretty clear.  They don’t have the skills or budget to build an API connection for their data. 

Not every firm or organization will use these new ISPs however for various reasons.  It may be that the API connection is a skill they already have in house or be that the API connection is a small part of the overall programme internally.  Whatever the reason the PDP will still have to deal with several dozen different organisations through integration testing.   

Now I can tell you with hard experience integration testing just takes longer than you think it should.  Two businesses reading the exact same specs will almost always find a way to interpret things slightly differently.  Then getting through firewalls, server certificates and all sorts of other fun things get involved.  Plus of course the inevitable “it’s not us that’s wrong its them”.   

And that’s just the integration to the Finder service.  Which is the easy bit.   

Under the hood many, many firms are having to work out how to bring together all their different legacy systems together, make the data available 24/7 and respond to volumes of requests the industry most do not deal with at the moment.  At the same time as Consumer Duty, the McCloud Judgement or just trying to upgrade creaking old pensions platforms.  

So yeah.  It’s a big, complicated IT project with hundreds of actors, trying to do something the UK has never done before.   

That’s why is taking so long.  Two Olympics so far.