The Department of Human Services is acting on feedback from the public to deliver a number of improvements to its digital channels over the coming months.
This is part of our commitment to improve service delivery incrementally while the major redevelopment of the Department’s ICT system continues in the background.
Department of Human Services General Manager Hank Jongen said the initial improvements would focus on myGov.
“The Department and its partner agencies have done a great job transforming the old Aus.gov.au service, which struggled to attract even a million members, into a thriving service with over 8.6 million registered users,” Mr Jongen said.
“However, I acknowledge that while almost 200,000 people use myGov successfully every day, their experience is not always as easy as it should be and improvements are needed.
“The Department has listened to complaints and feedback from myGov users about how to improve the current system.
“A programme of work is now underway to address the most pressing issues that we have received feedback around.
“We will work over the coming months to fix a number of the issues that frustrate our users most, while considering further improvements that are needed.
“We expect these improvements to reduce the level of inconvenience being experienced by the public when completing simple transactions through myGov.
“There is a long way to go before the Department’s welfare payment infrastructure matches our ambitious vision for service delivery, but in the meantime improvements such as these will become commonplace.”
Some of the myGov improvements include:
- Giving users the option to choose their own unique username, which will reduce incorrect logins from a staggering 15 per cent to below 2 per cent.
- Significantly reducing the length of time people are locked out of their accounts if they forget their login details.
- Enabling users to securely unlock suspended accounts online, without having to call the helpdesk.
- Addressing session timing-outs so that people can switch between myGov and members’ services seamlessly without having to log back in after longer transactions.