Moman’s Case Study: “Centrelink”

• What Can Australians Learn from Centrelink’s COVID Response?
• Centrelink COVID Response Provides Blueprint for Australia in the ‘New Normal’ 

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an historic challenge for Australians. The hardship and heartache were, and are, palpable, and will not fade from memory anytime soon. And yet, as hard as it has been, Australians have a reason to take pride in the way they have weathered the storm. Today, all across the world, eyes are turning to Australia in admiration.

In the United States, The Washington Post is calling Australia a “COVID-19 Success Story,” while Forbes Magazine describes the country’s COVID response as “the envy of many countries.” Meanwhile, the BBC is discussing the “rapid rebound” of the Australian economy, while global consulting giant McKinsey is advising that “Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic offers valuable, actionable insights for decision makers worldwide.”

The question is, what are these insights? That is to say, how did Australia outperform its peers?

Beyond the natural resilience of the Australian people, there is at least one recurring factor which appears in nearly all reports of success – the performance of Centrelink. Consider, when the pandemic first hit in March of 2020 and lines of the newly unemployed stretched around the block outside Centrelink offices across the country, it took only 48 hours to put the technology in place so that the jobless could connect remotely. Incredibly, at the height of the pandemic, Centrelink processed 1.3 million jobseeker claims in 55 days, a volume which would usually have been processed in two and a half years.

But they did not stop there. They expanded online and mobile options across services, brought in video chat, and connected with users through social media; they used advanced analytics to streamline payments and better understand user desires. It was as the Australian Financial Review suggested, that “the COVID-19 crisis also sparked a digital revolution across the public sector to hold the nation together.”

But perhaps there is something more important which can be taken from Centrelink’s digital transformation than simply how to handle a pandemic. The question on the minds of many right now is not necessarily how the pandemic was handled, but what a “new normal” is going to look like moving forward.

Certainly, there can be little doubt that digital technology will be critical in Australia’s recovery from COVID, and, moreover, its future prosperity as a country. In fact, the government has already expressed its intent to make the country a world-leading digital economy and society by 2030. With their actions during COVID, Centrelink may have shown the way forward for governments and businesses, presenting a strategy for rapid and transformational digitization, adaptable and inclusive in the face of crisis. Perhaps what Centrelink provided is a blueprint for Australia as a whole.

It is interesting to think about – when Centrelink first consolidated 27,000 government employees into one system way back in 1997, it transformed the way government services were provided. And here they are again, on the cutting edge, leading the way into the future.