In July last year Centrelink rolled out a new automated income matching system for detecting and recovering debts. It became known as “Robodebt” and was designed to help the Department of Human Services collect $4.5 million in debt every day. In that sense, it was super efficient. Too efficient, even.
The “online compliance intervention” is designed to match the earnings you’ve reported on your Centrelink record with the earnings reported by your employers to the Australian Taxation Office. When it was launched, detected discrepancies rose from 20,000 per year, to 20,000 per day.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has just released a detailed report into the failings of the OCI – calling the system “poorly planned, deficient and unclea…
Read the full article at: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/04/poorly-planned-deficient-and-unclear-ombudsman-slams-centrelinks-automated-debt-raising-and-recovery-system/
