The government employment services agency has had to pause its Jobseeker compliance system for three weeks due to ongoing technical glitches.
A spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations told Government News: “The department identified issues with accessing the Workforce Australia IT system, as well as system slowness, and made the decision to pause mutual obligations requirements to ensure participants were not penalised as a result.” Mutual obligations are compliance requirements claimants must adhere to in order to receive payments.
The issues – which began in the week of 7 January – “were to do with access to the Workforce Australia platform administered by DEWR,” said the spokesperson. They added: “The intermittent issues in the week of 13 January related to the MyGov system administered by Services Australia and were resolved by 15 January.”
While there are currently no ongoing IT issues affecting access to the Workforce Australia IT system, extending the pause of compliance requirements to 27 January “is to enable better assurance that all issues are resolved and to provide more certainty for participants,” said the DEWR spokesperson. “The department acknowledges and apologises for the impact, including potential confusion and distress as a result of the disruptions or the communications about them, that pausing of requirements has on people.”
“We cannot have any confidence in a system which repeatedly fails.”
The latest in a series of tech bungles at Workforce Australia is further evidence its IT system is unfit for purpose, says the peak body for the community sector. “The latest IT failures in Workforce Australia are yet more evidence the system is failing,” ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie said.
ACOSS is demanding the government suspend its compliance system indefinitely and has called for “a full and thorough investigation” into Workforce Australia’s IT platform. “The compliance system cannot continue to operate against hundreds of thousands of people whilst the IT system is vulnerable to failure and the legality of decisions are in question,” Goldie said.
This isn’t the first time tech bugs have plagued the employment services system. The latest incident comes after a string of errors were uncovered last year, including the discovery that income support payments may have been illegally cancelled – an error that affected at least 1,000 people between April 2022 and July 2024.
“Payment suspensions and cancellation have extremely harmful impacts on people, including not only the loss of income but also potential homelessness, relationship breakdown and destitution,” Goldie said.
In December, ACOSS referred the Australian government to the Commonwealth Ombudsman for the payment error.
Meanwhile, in a separate IT issue revealed in January 2024, more than 1,000 people were wrongfully issued penalty notices. “We cannot have any confidence in a system which repeatedly fails, placing even greater stress on people living on the brink,” Goldie said.
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