Services Australia is responsible for the design, development, delivery, co-ordination and monitoring of government services and payments relating to social security, child support, students, families, aged care and health programs. Services Australia delivers payments and services to and on behalf of 34 Australian Government entities.

Services Australia is managing an information and communications technology (ICT) change program that is being implemented in the Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation (WPIT) Programme. The WPIT Programme includes redevelopment of ICT systems (delivering new technology) and redevelopment of business processes (operating structure, business rules and processes). The ICT stream is redeveloping the welfare payment system through a program of work that involves retaining and enhancing the functionality of existing elements of the system, adding new elements to the system, as well as replacing or decommissioning elements of the system. The WPIT Programme was originally estimated to cost around $1.5 billion over seven years from 2015 to 2022.

The welfare payment system contains information about millions of Australians who have received welfare payments over the past three decades. Each year over the four year period from 2015–16 to 2018–19, the system calculated and made over $110 billion in welfare payments to around 6 million Australians — job seekers, students, families, people with a disability, carers and older Australians — almost one-quarter of the expenses in the Commonwealth budget.

The audit objective was to assess whether Services Australia appropriately managed risks to operating the current welfare payment system and appropriately prepared to transition to the future system.

Main conclusions:

• Services Australia had largely appropriate arrangements to manage risks to operating the current welfare payment system, and to transition to the future system.
• Services Australia had largely appropriate arrangements to manage risks to operating the welfare payment system. Services Australia established and maintained a risk management framework at the entity and group levels that applied to various elements of the welfare payment system. Payment correctness and system availability risks were managed. Services Australia did not apply an appropriate framework to manage cyber security risk, and did not monitor the cost of operating the system.
• Preparations to transition to the future welfare payment system were largely appropriate. Services Australia established frameworks for planning transition to the future welfare payment system, and to plan the design of the future welfare payment system. However, delays to system elements decommissioning have put at risk expected benefits of the WPIT Programme. Services Australia has not yet established appropriate arrangements to migrate data to the future welfare payment system.