How do the public resolve trade-offs around fair process? New survey evidence on Universal Credit

Title: Trade-offs in Bureaucratic Justice in Universal Credit

Abstract: In our earlier research, we examined the factors that shape people’s evaluations of bureaucratic justice in the Universal Credit (UC) service. The five factors in the model are: usability; individualised treatment; dignity; efficiency; and neutrality. However, the way these process qualities apply when considering how to configure a process gives rise to some tensions; the inevitability of trade-offs when striving to design just administrative processes is a well-established idea within the literature. In the third phase of our study of the processes in the UC service, we took two trade-off tensions that officials in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) often face and, through a survey of 2,093 former or current Universal Credit claimants, sought to understand how UC claimants would resolve these trade-offs. Our intention was to capture quantitative data on questions that would usually be left to official judgment or tested through small-scale user research, thereby bringing a new perspective to this issue. The trade-offs we examined were between (a) consistency and discretion, and (b) speed and accuracy of decision. These results demonstrated that amongst UC claimants, there is a clear-cut preference for discretion over consistency and a slightly less clear-cut preference for accuracy over speed. These findings, we suggest, have two main implications. First, they demonstrate the value of capturing the claimant’s perspective on trade-offs within UC service design. Second, when claimants' perspectives are captured on this issue, they can pose questions about how the UC service is designed; while the DWP takes a ‘user-focused’ approach to design, its overall approach to trade-offs might be out of step with prevailing claimant sentiment on key issues.

Authors: Joe Tomlinson, Jed Meers, Simon Halliday, Aleksandra Cichocka, and Ben Seyd

Publication: Nuffield Foundation Paper

Link to paper: here.

Funder: The Nuffield Foundation