Is it the best solution? Likely not. But the problem is real and does demand a solution of some form.
From the original article: "According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ. The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link."
The problem is with the approach in attempting to reduce fraud.
Once a false positive from an incomplete match from the death register is proven false - when the pension recipient tells you they are still alive - you don't need to check up on that same incomplete match every 12 months, because you already know it's false.
Demanding "a solution of some form" completely misunderstands the problem and is the same approach that gave us the Post Office scandal.
I don't follow? This is just a data quality problem. Should it be fixed? Obviously. But everyone deals with bad data. You can't fix that, you just optimize around it.
The Post Office scandal was emphatically NOT about a data quality problem. It was that they were criminally prosecuting people to cover up their data quality problem. Again, everyone has bad data.
I thought that was clear enough in context. But: "Anti-Money Laundering" and "Know your Customer". They come up a lot in discussions here. Also, FWIW: if you're unclear about what someone meant, calling them stupid is a really terrible way to educate yourself.
This woman had to confirm three times in one month, and then still had her pension stop.
