The high error rate of Centrelink’s automated debt recovery operation is “catastrophic”, “shocking”, “appalling” and “extremely preventable,” according to the Turnbull Government’s former digital transformation tsar Paul Shetler.
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If the government was hoping Mr Shetler would go quietly into the night after resigning as its chief digital officer in late November, it must be very, very disappointed right now.
If the government was a private company it would go out of business or be shut down by regulators for fraud over the Centrelink debacle, says former Digital Transformation Office head Paul Shetler.
The man handpicked by Malcolm Turnbull to head the government’s digital transformation has said the error rate in Centrelink’s data-matching process is so unfathomably high that it would send a commercial enterprise out of business.
Paul Shetler, the former digital transformation office head, criticised the government’s response to its latest IT crisis, telling Guardian Australia it was symptomatic of a culture of blame aversion within the bureaucracy.
The man the Malcolm Turnbull hired to transform the government’s digital capabilities has ripped into the Centrelink data-matching system, saying the reported 20% error rate would have already well and truly sunk a private company.
