Commonwealth Ombudsman Colin Neave has given 12 remedial recommendations to welfare agency Centrelink to pull its socks up after receiving 9,600 complaints from fed up customers about its service delivery.

These recommendations have followed a comprehensive investigation by Mr Neave which resulted in a report containing 40 case studies illustrating the problems that led to this abundance of complaints from customers to the Ombudsman’s office between January 2012 and September 2013.

In the report titled Investigation into Service Delivery Complaints about Centrelink, it was established that complaints about Centrelink and its predecessors have always made up a substantial portion of the workload of the Ombudsman’s office.

Mr Neave explained that in each Ombudsman Annual report since 1998, Centrelink has been the Commonwealth agency about which it has received the most complaints.

According to the report, complaints during the 2012-2013 time period included one-hour waits in Centrelink’s telephone queues, multiple call transfers and being told to call another number when they finally spoke to a Centrelink officer and increased call costs.

Other complaints included confusing and misleading computer generated correspondence; problems accessing online services; refusal or inability to deal with customer enquiries in person; loss of documents; processing backlogs; inflexible procedures; failure to identify and respond to customers with serious disadvantage and vulnerability.

Another complaint highlighted in the report included “an inaccessible (and at times, ineffective) complaints service” at Centrelink.

However the Ombudsman concluded in the report that an organisation the size of the Department of Human Services (DHS) or its Centrelink program cannot be expected to be “error free”.

So after a consultation process with customers about what they wanted, Centrelink has started a process of reform that reflects “what people said they wanted from an integrated DHS”.

The report is an important step in the DHS’s five year project to reform service delivery for all its customers, as Mr Neave believes the report will provide a “useful baseline” to measure the Department’s success at the end of the project.

Although Mr Neave acknowledged that the Ombudsman’s office doesn’t have the expertise on the scale of the DHS’s Centrelink program, it has requested that the DFS consider a range of actions to address the shortcomings illustrated by the 40 case studies included in the report.

He said that Centrelink operated in an environment of increasing complexity and demand for its services.

“I also acknowledge that the Department of Human Services has already introduced a range of innovative service delivery options to assist Centrelink customers and those of its other programs, particularly in the area of online services. It has also improved its management of in person inquiries at its service centres,” Mr Neave said.

The DHS has thus responded to the recommendations made by the Ombudsman and has agreed to implement all of them either in full or in part.

“I am grateful for its cooperation through the course of the investigation,” Mr Neave said.

Centrelink’s complex web of problems doesn’t end at the complaints sampled in the Ombudsman’s report as the government has also identified the need to replace the agency’s aging transactional computing system as part of an urgent technology infrastructure renewal program.

This problem came to light when Treasurer Joe Hockey took the airwaves to say that it would cost “billions” to replace its IBM-based systems at the Australian Taxation Office and Centrelink, which he argued have been run into the ground over the last 30 years.

Centrelink responds to complaints by acting on Ombudsman recommendations

Excerpt: The Department of Human Services has agreed to act on 12 remedial recommendations made by the Commonwealth Ombudsman to sharpen its service delivery after a slew of nearly 10,000 complaints from customers.

Commonwealth Ombudsman Colin Neave has given 12 remedial recommendations to welfare agency Centrelink to pull its socks up after receiving 9,600 complaints from fed up customers about its service delivery.

These recommendations have followed a comprehensive investigation by Mr Neave which resulted in a report containing 40 case studies illustrating the problems that led to this abundance of complaints from customers to the Ombudsman’s office between January 2012 and September 2013.

In the report titled Investigation into Service Delivery Complaints about Centrelink, LINKit was established that complaints about Centrelink and its predecessors have always made up a substantial portion of the workload of the Ombudsman’s office.

Mr Neave explained that in each Ombudsman Annual report since 1998, Centrelink has been the Commonwealth agency about which it has received the most complaints.

According to the report, complaints during the 2012-2013 time period included one-hour waits in Centrelink’s telephone queues, multiple call transfers and being told to call another number when they finally spoke to a Centrelink officer and increased call costs.

Other complaints included confusing and misleading computer generated correspondence; problems accessing online services; refusal or inability to deal with customer enquiries in person; loss of documents; processing backlogs; inflexible procedures; failure to identify and respond to customers with serious disadvantage and vulnerability.

Another complaint highlighted in the report included “an inaccessible (and at times, ineffective) complaints service” at Centrelink.

However the Ombudsman concluded in the report that an organisation the size of the Department of Human Services (DHS) or its Centrelink program cannot be expected to be “error free”.

So after a consultation process with customers about what they wanted, Centrelink has started a process of reform that reflects “what people said they wanted from an integrated DHS”.

The report is an important step in the DHS’s five year project to reform service delivery for all its customers, as Mr Neave believes the report will provide a “useful baseline” to measure the Department’s success at the end of the project.

Although Mr Neave acknowledged that the Ombudsman’s office doesn’t have the expertise on the scale of the DHS’s Centrelink program, it has requested that the DFS consider a range of actions to address the shortcomings illustrated by the 40 case studies included in the report.

He said that Centrelink operated in an environment of increasing complexity and demand for its services.

“I also acknowledge that the Department of Human Services has already introduced a range of innovative service delivery options to assist Centrelink customers and those of its other programs, particularly in the area of online services. It has also improved its management of in person inquiries at its service centres,” Mr Neave said.

The DHS has thus responded to the recommendations made by the Ombudsman and has agreed to implement all of them either in full or in part.

“I am grateful for its cooperation through the course of the investigation,” Mr Neave said.

Centrelink’s complex web of problems doesn’t end at the complaints sampled in the Ombudsman’s report as the government has also identified the need to replace the agency’s aging transactional computing system as part of an urgent technology infrastructure renewal program.

This problem came to light when Treasurer Joe Hockey took the airwaves to say that it would cost “billions” to replace its IBM-based systems at the Australian Taxation Office and Centrelink, which he argued have been run into the ground over the last 30 years.