In the financial year where the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme dominated the headlines and captivated former and current staff and clients for months as its brazen illegality and ethical bankruptcy was laid bare in public, the scandal is mentioned just twice in passing in Services Australia’s 2022-2023 annual report.
With the ultimate fate of many key senior executive service staff involved in the feral budget savings Ponzi scheme still yet to be revealed, as well as a replacement for outgoing chief executive Rebecca Skinner it’s clear the agency is keen to mark out a future that is not captive to its past.
In a section of Skinner’s chief executive’s review, the head of the agency notes there has been “a period of reflection”
“The report presents much for the Australian Government and Australian Public Service to consider, including the commissioner’s adverse findings. At the time of tabling this report, the government is considering its response,” Skinner wrote.
“For Services Australia, it will take time to work through the report and determine next steps and our response.
“Over the past 3 and a half years we’ve demonstrated unwavering service delivery in supporting Australians in times of crisis. We’ve developed resilience and a clear focus on putting our customers at the centre of everything we do. Those attributes will continue to guide us.”
The good news
There is good news on the digital front with the agency’s table of Strategic Performance Measures revealing that “tasks managed by customers in a digital channel” hit 91.5%, exceeding its target of 81%, while uptime (availability of digital channels) hit 99.8% over its 98.5% target.
Administrative correctness (we love that term) of payments also walked it in at 98.8%, 0.8% over benchmark, while customer trust was 78%, 8% above target.
The bad news
For those not self-enabling digitally, things are still slow. It’s hard to find people, a call centre outsourcing contract was not renewed and customer satisfaction is still below target at 80.2% versus an 85% benchmark.
Customers are still hanging on the telephone hunting for a human.
For “Customers served within 15 minutes” (an outlier of a metric all of its own) Services Australia chalked up a “partially achieved” performance outcome hitting just 60.8% of a 70% benchmark that itself is a little unambitious.
And that’s before Services Australia sent 610 call centre agents from Serco packing at the end of June, prompting an intervention by government services minister Bill Shorten to give the jettisoned staff a decent separation package.
“Work processed within timeliness standards” also dropped well below target for a “partially achieved”, coming in at 68.7% versus a 90% target.
Stuff the minister will want to avoid
It’s not all bouquets for the digital experience though.
On the customer satisfaction front Services Australia noted that “Social Security and Welfare customer satisfaction was below target this year. Extended wait times for Centrelink customers had a significant impact on satisfaction, which was evidenced in the results for the ‘time to receive service’ driver.”
“Satisfaction was consistent throughout the financial year with Social Security and Welfare’s face-to-face channel achieving the highest satisfaction score and the online channel achieving the lowest.”
Perhaps the biggest drop that will make a big difference to the budget and potentially public service pay is how many Australians stopped claiming welfare and Medicare payments.
The 2022-23 Services Australia annual report puts total payments (Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support) for that year at $219.5 billion, down from $226.7 billion from the preceding year.
That’s a net saving of a whopping $7.2 billion to the government bottom line, explaining some of the confidence in a technical surplus.
If that sounds like it could fund a pay rise for Centrelink workers striking over pay, that’s because it could.
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‘Digital first’ has made the social services frontline a lot tougher and rougher: so where to now?
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