Last-ditch efforts to improve the way state benefits agency UWV provides online services to claimants have stalled because of divisions within the organisation’s board, the NRC says on Tuesday.

The UWV has for years struggled to improve the operation of websites such as werk.nl as well as the way information is processed digitally, the paper says. This has not only wasted millions of euros but led to numerous complaints from users.

‘There are differences of opinion between the CIO [head of IT] and the directors of the management board and so no decision has been taken,’ the paper quotes an internal report as saying.

‘People and staff are becoming more dependent on the system working,’ the report says. ‘This underlines the importance of having stable, well maintained, manageable and simple provision of information.’

‘The divisions between managers mean it is unclear which of the aims the project will be able to realise’.

A spokesman for the UWV said the project ‘required more time than forecast’ but has not run into difficulty. ‘There are concrete proposals to make the organisation more flexible.’

This weekend it emerged that the UWV has a major backlog of work. According to UWV documents seen by Trouw, the UWV is currently struggling to process 73,000 reports of fraud, while 47,000 people are waiting to enter a back-to-work re-integration scheme and 25,000 people are waiting for a medical re-assessment to see if they are fit for work.