Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
providers. Reflecting Centrelink's focus on cash
payments, the majority of Centrelink's 25,000 staff
are non-professional administrators who utilize
Centrelink's ICT infrastructure to input claimant
data for assessing eligibility to cash benefits (which
are then paid automatically) and to answer client
queries. Professionally-trained social workers and
other welfare workers constitute a tiny proportion
of Centrelink's workforce. These professionals
are used to assist in making policy decisions in
complex client cases, case managing clients who
require financial case management, and managing
and providing emergency services in the case of
natural disasters.
In 2007, Centrelink's service delivery infra-
structure was made up of 316 local offices, 25
telephone call centers, and almost 400 smaller, re-
gional service access points, as well as national and
state management offices (Centrelink, 2007, p. 11).
Supporting this service delivery infrastructure is an
extensive computer network, which is described
as 'one of the most sophisticated IT environments
in the southern hemisphere' (2007, p. 115). This
infrastructure includes several massive mainframe
computers linked to numerous Local Area Net-
works (LANs) incorporating PCs and some dumb
terminals (which are simply computers used as
monitors to present data processed by an external
computer), immense data warehousing capacities,
and separate parallel computers for data-matching
capabilities. Like other national government social
security and social insurance agencies which focus
on cash benefits, Centrelink (and its predecessor
the Department of Social Security) has always
been a very big user and early adopter of ICTs
in government. Internationally, Centrelink has a
reputation as a technological innovator, which has
been recognized within Australia by its receipt
of a number of national e-government awards
(http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/better-
practice-and-collaboration/e-award.html).
Centrelink operations are significantly shaped
by the wider social, political and economic en-
vironment. As in most OECD countries, the rise
of the New Public Management (Osbourne and
Gaebler, 1993; Pollitt, 2003) - which argues for
public management to operate according to private
business models - has resulted in a widespread use
of performance indicators and targets, which focus
the mind of front-line staff. Within Centrelink,
performance targets include the percentage of
benefit claims processed within a given period
of time, responding to customer advice within a
given time frame, or level of customer satisfac-
tion. Meeting such targets has been a challenge
in an environment of complex and fast-changing
social policy, and has resulted in considerable
problems with inaccurate claims processing
(Howard, 2006; Whyte, 2005). Neo-liberal politi-
cal rationalities have also resulted in an emphasis
on identifying benefit overpayments and welfare
fraud and blaming recipients for benefit errors,
and the development of increasingly coercive,
punitive, neo-paternalistic workfare policies to
reduce what is perceived to be increasing welfare
dependency (Mead, 1997; Peck, 2001). As part of
the dual objective of improving service delivery
and reducing costs, Centrelink has sought to utilize
ICTs for self-service and integrate their operations
with other (federal) government agencies and
non-government welfare organizations.
caSe StuDy: centrelink
How then has Centrelink used ICTs in its role as
a national deliverer of welfare services? This sec-
tion answers this question according to the four
ways ICTs are used in social policy as outlined
in the Theory section above. As will be evident,
the role of ICTs in human services is extremely
extensive and varied, and also has a history of
both successes and failures.
First, social policies may be a response to
ICTs. In terms of the governmentality framework
described in this chapter, this dynamic may be
an expression of the way the advent of new ICTs
stimulate revised, refined or even new “political ra-
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