A Senate committee probing Centrelink’s robo-debt scheme heard spreadsheets were used to perform tasks Services Australia’s computer systems could not.
A Senate committee has heard that Services Australia staff were forced to revert back to Excel spreadsheets to rectify some of the errors made by Centrelink’s automated income compliance program. The remarks were made on Friday during a hearing held by the Community Affairs References Committee as part of its ongoing probe of Centrelink’s compliance program. Representatives from the agency responsible for the program that colloquially became known as robo-debt were asked if Excel spreadsheets, rather than computer systems, were being used to manually view debt files to determine and calculate refunds. „No, and yes — if I can put it in those terms,“ Services Australia integrity strategy, engagement, and policy branch national manager Robert McKellar said. „The use of Excel spreadsheets was a part of the process of disaggregating what we would call mismatched records and multiple debts where there was a necessity to conduct some detailed analysis, where a customer had multiple assessments against their record and we needed to identify the correct one to apply back into the customer’s record on our main system in order to correctly assess whether a debt included averaging income information or not.“ He said that was not a functionality available on the main system, but explained the Excel spreadsheet process was needed to assess the correct information in order to record that back onto customers‘ records. The reference to Excel was made in a report performed by KPMG that, according to Senator Deborah O’Neill, talked about ongoing training and „learner“ staff „making very sophisticated decisions using technologies such as spreadsheets and Post-it notes“. „I’m not sure where the reference to Post-it notes comes from, but the role of KPMG in the process was one of providing external assurance over our risk management and quality control processes to ensure their effectiveness and to advise on any possible improvements,“ McKeller clarified.
