Kerrie first walked in to the former Department of Social Security office in Lismore in 1986 as a fresh-faced 20 year old.
As a newly minted member of the Commonwealth Public Service she remembers starting out at a time when microfiche was still used to store official information.
“This was a way we reduced the size of paper records – to about one twenty-fifth of the original document size so we could fit it all in our files,” said Kerrie.
She says the past three decades have passed “with a blink of an eye” thanks to her ability to take on new and challenging social services roles.
“Even though I have spent thirty years at the Lismore office, I have managed to regularly reinvent myself,” said Kerrie.
“My career to date has ranged from administration, to customer service to corporate and staff support.”
In 2006, she joined the inaugural Mobile Services Team and was tasked with helping to get the first mobile office on the road to bring face-to-face Centrelink services to drought-hit regional and rural communities across Australia.
Today, she remains one of the team’s founding members and a proud advocate of the travelling service – which now boasts a two-vehicle Mobile Service Centre fleet, fully equipped with the same technology and services as any other department service centre.
“It is amazing that what I thought was going to be a six month job has turned into this 10 year anniversary milestone – time certainly flies and I wouldn’t change a thing.
“It’s exciting to think the work processes I established at the beginning of the mobile office drought initiative are still operating today.”
Over the past decade, the Mobile Service Centres have covered almost 700,000 kilometres, helped over 120,000 customers, visited more than 3800 towns and been deployed to 20 disaster situations.
After three decades, Kerrie said she’s officially part of the furniture.
“After 30 years, I’ve worked for the public service longer than some of the Lismore staff have been alive!
“I would like to think that I will keep having a positive impact on the office wellbeing and atmosphere in Lismore.”
More information
Read more about the department’s Mobile Service Centres.
