Ethos Issue 3, Oct 2007

Integrated Service Delivery: The Australian Department of Human Services
Jeff Popple

One significant improvement has been the development of the Human Services Portal,² which provides a single entry point to the online services offered by Centrelink, Medicare Australia and the Child Support Agency. The Portal also has a single sign-on to the online services of the agencies, so instead of having to go through three separate identification processes, the customer now only has to do it once before being able to easily access the services of the three agencies. Another noteworthy advance has been the introduction of electronic claiming processes for Medicare services, so that Australians can now receive their rebates electronically at the point of service, instead of having to make a separate trip to a shopfront to receive their rebate.

How does the Department of Human Services harness the natural strengths of its component agencies in order to achieve whole-of-government policy objectives?
By looking across the six agencies that make up the portfolio, Human Services is able to see the possible synergies and advantages by using a range of agencies. An example of this was the delivery of the Liquid Petroleum Gas Scheme, which provided a rebate to Australians who converted their petrol cars to liquid petroleum gas. The scheme was jointly delivered by Centrelink and Medicare Australia. Working with these agencies, we were able to develop a delivery arrangement which used the natural advantages of the two agencies:

• Centrelink’s ability to quickly implement payment systems and efficiently make payments; and
• Medicare’s network, which is largely based in easily accessible shopfronts in shopping centres.

This meant that in a matter of weeks, the system was set up and people were able to lodge claim forms at a convenient shopfront, which then sent the claim forms to a processing centre that quickly processed them and made payments to customers.

Is the Department of Human Services involved in ensuring that service outcomes are considered in the policymaking process?
I think that this has been one of the main achievements of the Department. Too often in the past, the service delivery arm of government was separate from the policymaking process. This meant that sometimes good policy ideas were unable to achieve the envisaged outcomes for Government because too little consideration had been given to the implementation issues. With the formation of Human Services, greater emphasis has been given to service delivery. On the practical level, this means that service delivery has a more prominent role in policy development by being involved in the Cabinet process. With the establishment of a department of state with a specific responsibility for service delivery, policy departments have also been more willing to engage in discussions about service delivery at a much earlier stage. Proper consideration of service delivery means that the customer is better served when the individual policies are implemented.