Launched in July 2015, the Jobactive program aims to assist job seekers to obtain sustainable employment, particularly those in receipt of government benefits. The Jobactive program is the Australian government’s primary employment services program.

In 2021–22, the Australian Government budgeted to spend just over $2 billion on the Jobactive program to help job seekers move from welfare to work and meet their mutual obligations.

This audit also has the potential to inform any changes to the Jobactive program that could be considered as part of the DESE’s reforms to employment programs that are currently in the development and piloting phase and are due for implementation in July 2022. The implementation of the reform will coincide with the procurement and engagement of new providers and the delivery of a digital platform to support the reforms.

The objective of this audit was to assess the effectiveness of the Department of Education, Skills and Employment in managing the integrity of payments to employment service providers.

Key findings:

• DESE is largely effective in managing the integrity of payments to providers. The DESE Jobactive Payment Integrity Assurance Framework (assurance framework) is effectively implemented, however, it could be improved by a detailed analysis of non-compliance instances to provide DESE with insights for continuous improvement and targeted assurance activities.
• DESE has established a largely appropriate assurance framework to ensure payment integrity. The assurance framework is informed by risk with appropriate mechanisms to detect incorrect payments and governance arrangements to monitor the assurance activities. However, there is no detailed analysis undertaken of causes of non-compliance across rolling random sample cycle periods.