Minister for government services Bill Shorten has appointed the public service’s leading technology and digital policy architect to be the new chief executive of Services Australia, as the giant welfare agency attempts to restore its status as a leading innovator in service delivery.
Seasoned deputy secretary and institutional reformer David Hazlehurst has been picked for what must be the most difficult cultural and technical job in the bureaucracy, an arguably gifted executive when it comes to moving organisations from a state of institutional learned helplessness to persistent delivery that satisfies customers and stakeholders.
Hazlehurst’s appointment effectively draws a line under Services Australia’s previous tendency to look to Defence or the military for social services reformers that tended to produce leaders prepared to prosecute the so-called ‘punitive welfare’ model that deliberately created friction for people trying to access welfare.
While Hazlehurst most recently headed the secretariat for the NDIS review, he was the inaugural chief executive of the Digital Transformation Office (DTO) that had been intended to lead online service delivery reforms across the APS by providing customer-centric models and examples for improvement and reform of the public service.
Although championed by Malcolm Turnbull the DTO, later to become the Digital Transformation Agency, the reform initiative lost momentum after the fledgling agency was restructured and many key staff, some of whom were hired from overseas, walked out or defected to Service New South Wales that subsequently went on to become a world leader in digital service delivery.
Conversely, Services Australia became a strong subscriber to so-called ‘solutionism’ where systemic problems were addressed by one-off fixes that later imploded and harmed the agency’s customers, its staff and even ministers.
The epitome of this doctrine was the fraudulent and illegal robodebt program that transubstantiated welfare payments into receivables through a budget savings Ponzi scheme.
With more than a dozen senior public servants facing official sanctions for Australian Public Service Code of Conduct violations and some potentially facing criminal prosecution or corrupt conduct proceedings, Hazlehurst will have a strong mandate to clean out cultural rot and deprogram any adversarial culture towards clients that was cultivated by the previous government.
Part of that will be getting several anchoring technology platforms back on track, like the myGov digital account facility and harmonising data exchanges between agencies to allow greater automation and faster reconciliation of customer and organisational payments and earnings.
Hazlehurst led the myGov audit initiated by Bill Shorten that gave the Albanese government an unvarnished stocktake of the issues facing Services Australia, which is still struggling to answer customers calling the agency on the phone.
Since then, Shorten has appointed former New South Wales customer and digital services minister Victor Dominello as a key advisor to help bring federal transactions and services up to the level of Service New South Wales.
A renowned cat herder, Hazlehurst as head of Services Australia will be instrumental in restoring collegiate relationships with other agencies like Tax who came to mistrust the welfare agency’s intentions over the robodebt years.
“Services Australia has responded to significant challenges and undergone a raft of changes since Labor came to government, including the conclusion of the Robodebt era of administration,” Shorten said.
“Mr Hazlehurst will be a steady hand to lead the agency through the next phase and I have full trust in his professionalism and ability to put our must vulnerable Australians first. I thank acting CEO Chris Birrer for his steadfast and passionate leadership in this important transitionary period, following Ms Skinner’s retirement.”
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