The two outages were both experienced in December, with some people unable to see their account balance.
The Department of Social Services (DSS) has revealed two instances of outages that affected those placed on a welfare quarantining system by the Australian government. Referred to as „participants“, those on the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) labelled as „racist“ by senators previously, had access to their funds interrupted on two occasions in December. For just under two hours on 22 December 2020, an outage saw 10 individuals not have their correct account balance displayed; and on 31 December 2020, a two-hour outage saw funds being dispersed into accounts but not updating the account balance, affecting 20 customers. In response to questions taken on notice during Senate Estimates in May, DSS said the funds were still available for use. DSS reported the two instances as the only outages experienced in the period spanning 1 January 2020 to 31 May 2021. The CDC kicked off in 2016 as a trial. It aims to govern how those in receipt of welfare spend their money, with the idea being to both prevent the sale of alcohol, cigarettes, and some gift cards and block the funds from being used on activities such as gambling.
