[Bricktop]

Millions of mistakes by Centrelink
By Michael McKinnon, FOI editor
February 14, 2004
CENTRELINK, the federal government agency that supports one-third of all Australians, made 1.13million mistakes, mostly involving payments, over a four-month period last year, confidential government documents reveal.

A consultant's report, obtained by The Weekend Australian under Freedom of Information laws, paints an appalling picture of a mistake-prone organisation intimidated by hostile customers and riddled by bureaucratic inefficiencies, poor training, staff laziness and poor accountability.

The report, prepared by Melbourne consultants DBM, shows more than 700,000 Centrelink customers - across the retirement, employment, families and children, youth and student, and disability and carers payment streams - were hit by mistakes last year, often more than once.

As a result, benefit payments regularly were wrongly cut off, overpaid, or not awarded in the first place because Centrelink staff had incorrectly assessed eligibility.

Other customers were "breached" for failing to provide documents that subsequently were discovered unopened in Centrelink mail.

Problems with payments accounted for 45 per cent of mistakes identified by customers; eligibility issues, 23 per cent; and documentation misplaced by Centrelink, 18 per cent. Analysis shows that recipients of a family payment were significantly more likely to report experiencing a problem with payments than those on retirement benefit.

The report shows that when mistakes were made, the Centrelink system made it extremely difficult for officers to rectify them, forcing 65 per cent of customers to contact the agencies at least twice to get them fixed, even when they were completely blameless.

One example highlighted was of a customer with a long history of earning $98 a fortnight being forced to visit a Centrelink office to verify his income after a keystroke error recorded the amount as $980.

Centrelink officers even made errors in not knowing to advise victims of mistakes that meant they were entitled to claim compensation from the organisation. High turnover of staff was a contributor to mistakes.

The report says customer service officers at Centrelink were constantly under pressure to keep the queues in front of them moving.

It also was critical of the "lack of ownership of documentation", noting that staff even observed colleagues filing a customer's documentation in their own personal drawers, while others passed the buck, slotting documents they did not feel were their responsibility into the pigeonholes of co-workers.

"Any given piece of documentation could end up doing the whole round of pigeonholes before anyone takes ownership of it," one staff member said.

"A poor and inconsistent approach to documenting customer records is one of the major contributing causes of both payment errors and lost documentation," the report says. It slams Centrelink for having no standards for storing information.

"Staff believe many of their colleagues do not have the mindset that their investment of 30 seconds now to document the record might save someone else 30 minutes of looking for something and, more importantly, save the customer a lot of heartache from wrongfully being cut off."

Even Centrelink jargon caused errors. The report citing the example of a customer being asked "do you care for a dependent child?" - meaning does he/she have responsibility for a child - taking it as a query as to whether the customer emotionally cared about the child.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/co ... 01,00.html

Yep, and I'm personally so sick of them, and the way they stuff everybody around. Im one of these people who have to deal with them because theyve made mistakes in my Youth Allowance payments, like not seeing that i had handed in medical certificates 3 times, sending me application forms to be handed in when none were to be sent, and not recognising that i am indeed a full time student. sigh.

At least it made front page news on a national paper. It needs to be overhauled.

Drummond

[GandalfTheGrey]

In their defence, the figure 1.13 million was extrapolated from a very small sample. Nonetheless, I can testify to many blunders they have made.

[Thin Spirits]

I agree. they're pretty fucked up from all my dealing with them.