In response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) by FTAdviser, the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) said it doesn’t hold information on how much it would cost the government to deliver the pension dashboard project.
The government officials also don't know what would be the bill of setting up a system - or adapting the existing ones - to be able to migrate the state pension data into the dashboard.
"We continue to work with the pensions industry to determine how best we can facilitate their delivery of the pensions dashboard, and this will enable us to identify costs, including costs to the government," a spokesman for the DWP said in its response to the FOI.
Government officials mentioned that, so far, the department has spent about £100,000 on the pension dashboard feasibility study, as FTAdviser reported in September.
The pension dashboard, which is due to launch in 2019, aims to allow savers to see all of their retirement pots in one place at the same time, giving them a greater awareness of their assets and how to plan for their retirement.
Last month the government said it would let industry take the lead on the project.
The government tasked the industry with delivering the dashboard after it emerged in July that Esther McVey, secretary of state for work and pensions, had made moves to kill off the project, saying the service should not be provided by the state.
Fiona Tait, technical director at Intelligent Pensions, said the fact the government was unable at this late stage to provide a budget for the migration of state pension to the pensions dashboard would seem to underline the fact that the intention was for the industry to carry out most of the work, and that the government did not see the inclusion of state pension data as a priority.
She said: "This is of considerable concern given that the state pension provides over half of the income of retirees in lower to median income brackets."
Plumbing the state pension into the dashboard will be an additional government cost, and one that it should be thinking about.Kate SmithAndrew Tully, pensions technical director at Canada Life, noted it was not surprising that the dashboard cost was unknown, since "key decisions have not been made around coverage, inclusion of state benefits and how it is accessed".
He said: "The government has had experience of high profile IT projects significantly overrunning on cost and time, and so may be nervous about leading a significant IT build.
"One of the reasons why government wants industry involved is to not only to pick up much of the cost, but also to help manage the project delivery."
Mr Tully agreed with Ms Tait that the dashboard had to include state pension data to be successful.
He said: "Building a sub-standard version which only contains some information means it is likely to become a white elephant, with running costs out of all proportion to its usefulness, and we will have failed generations of pension savers in the process."
At the Conservative Party conference, Ms McVey said the government will "be giving people the opportunity to access their pension information through an industry led pension dashboard, building on the government’s check your state pension online service".
DWP declined to comment further.
Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, said the government was looking to minimise taxpayer costs with the project.
However, "plumbing the state pension into the dashboard will be an additional government cost, and one that it should be thinking about".
She said: "The government would also have a role in supporting the setup and ongoing governance of the pension dashboard project, which at the very least would cover the costs of personnel attending meetings.
"It is important the pension dashboard project learns any lessons from the Open Banking initiative. The feasibility study hopefully will be able to address this and many other of the long list of unanswered issues still to be resolved."
Sir Steve Webb, director of policy at Royal London and former pensions minister, agreed with this view.
He said: "As part of the feasibility study it is to be hoped that the DWP have made some realistic assessments of the cost to the public purse of playing their part in the dashboard project.
"At the very least, the government will need to supply state pension data to the dashboard and it is to be hoped that conversations with HMRC about this are at an advanced stage.
"Hopefully the forthcoming feasibility study will answer these questions and will help the project to gather momentum."
For Adrian Boulding, director of retirement strategy at Dunstan Thomas, the stumbling block for the government was not cost, but trust.
He said: "The state pension forecast is already available online to those who have a government digital identity, so it will cost very little to plug that system into the back of the pensions dashboard.
"The stumbling block will be if the government trusts that an industry led dashboard with an industry digital identity is secure enough to allow it to connect to a system currently protected by a government digital identity."
Kay Ingram, director of public policy at national firm LEBC, suggested the oversight of protocols and security of data should be tasked to The Pensions Regulator and to the Financial Conduct Authority jointly.
Ms Ingram also argued that migrating the state pension data wouldn’t involve much extra cost, since "the right technology can make this a seamless process".
She said: "It should be remembered that there are currently £3bn of unclaimed pension funds where providers have lost contact with policyholders.
"The tax levied on the income due to be paid from those pensions if they could be reunited with their owners would more than cover the cost to the Treasury of setting the dashboard up."
maria.espadinha@ft.com
