The Auditor-General’s follow-up of a 2014-15 audit of Centrelink’s telephone service has found that despite the Department of Human Services (DHS) adopting one and partially adopting two of the audit’s three recommendations, caller waiting times had hardly moved.
In his report, Management of Smart Centres’ Centrelink Telephone Services — Follow-up, Auditor-General, Grant Hehir examined the extent to which DHS had implemented the original recommendations.
“In 2017-18 the Average Speed of Answer for calls to Centrelink was 15 minutes and 58 seconds against a target of less than or equal to 16 minutes,” Mr Hehir said.
“Performance against the Average Speed of Answer Key Performance Indicator has remained largely stable since the previous audit.”
He said that in 2017–18, DHS received around 17 million visits to service centres and handled about 52 million calls for Centrelink, Child Support and Medicare Program services.
In that period there were also 49.1 million Centrelink transactions for digital and self-service.
“As at November 2018, Human Services has fully implemented one and partially implemented two of the three recommendations made in Auditor-General Report No. 37 of 2014–15,” Mr Hehir said.
“In response to the recommendation in the previous Auditor-General report, Human Services has developed two channel strategies. The first was not effectively implemented.”
Mr Hehir made two recommendations in his latest audit, both of which were agreed by the Department.
Commenting on the audit the Minister for Human Services, Michael Keenan said it confirmed the Department was improving Centrelink’s call centre operations.
“In the last six months alone, call wait times have dropped by 45 seconds to an average of 15 minutes and 15 seconds, which shows that we are heading in the right direction,” Mr Keenan said.
“At the same time, busy signals have dropped by 42 per cent and there has been a 28 per cent reduction in call transfers.”
The Auditor-General’s 61-page report can be accessed at this PS News link and the audit team was Jacqueline Hedditch, Tara Rutter, Barbara Das, Steven Favell, Emily Drown and David Brunoro.
