The New Digital Governance of Welfare to Work

Examining the success of Workforce Australia in moving towards a 'digital first' employment system.

Update

The Australian Welfare and Work Lab is pleased to present the findings of qualitative interviews with 52 current / former Workforce Australia Online participants. These interviews shine a light on the advantages and disadvantages Workforce Australia's move towards a 'digital first' employment system.

In summary, participants agree that Workforce Australia Online offers them greater flexibility and control than with prior iterations. However, additional supports and improvements are necessary to address the burden of learning costs on participants, improve the employment support functionality of the digital interface, and reduce administrative burdens.

Key findings

  • Respondents generally felt that the Workforce Australia Online digital interface and Points-Based Activation System (PBAS) were relatively straightforward, simple, and easy to understand. However, this was contradicted by other comments made by interviewees demonstrating a misunderstanding of PBAS (e.g. participants being engaged in activities they were unaware could be claimed towards their mutual obligations target). This suggests that there are high learning costs associated with fully understanding the new system.
  • The Workforce Australia Online digital interface primarily functions as a mutual obligations administration platform but issues with the job and training search functionality limit its use as an ‘all-in-one’ employment service platform.
  • The emphasis on job searching creates pressure on participants to submit resumes each reporting period regardless of market conditions or opportunities relative to their skill set.
  • Despite the existence of a dedicated Digital Services Contact Centre (DSCC) to offer administrative support and troubleshooting to participants, interviewees were confused by the differences between the DSCC, Services Australia, and Centrelink.
  • After a one-year period of self-management without an employment outcome, participants are moved from self-management to a provider under Workforce Australia Services. Interviewees that had made this transition identified their providers as serving as ‘systems counsellors,’ helping to familiarise them with elements of the digital interface and PBAS that they have not previously understood.

Read the report here

Project aims and research streams

Exploring how digital delivery, as a policy design choice, improves frontline services and system governance, and supports policy learning to improve outcomes for jobseekers.

Digital delivery has the potential to enhance services, as well as reduce them – particularly for vulnerable populations. How this happens depends on how providers implement digitalisation in practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made exploring the practices of digitalisation even more critical. The shift to digital service provision is a hallmark of the pandemic, as people work, learn and socialise from home. There is more pressure on policy makers to find efficiencies. Employers and job seekers are also adjusting to a changing labour market and new risks. Many services have had to adapt. In some cases, customers have identified benefits they would like to see continue.

The research team examines how digitalisation of employment services changes governance at the ground level. We do this by looking at the complex effects of digitisation on service delivery to jobseekers and employers. The team works in collaboration with key industry partners

The project seeks to

  • Examine how ‘digital first’ changes the delivery of employment services to all jobseekers
  • Analyse the changes in roles and relationships between jobseekers, service providers, employers, and government (Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business)
  • Explain how these changes impact our wider understanding of new forms of governance and accountability
  • Examine whether the emerging system is more responsive to the needs of jobseekers and employers
  • Identify policy learnings and service design enhancements that can be incorporated into the new system.

The project includes four streams of research

  1. Benchmarking international case studies on experiments with digitalisation
  2. Australian case studies of the current/future use of digital tools by providers, jobseekers, employers and government
  3. A survey in 2023 exploring the impact of these changes on the frontline (adapting questionnaires undertaken in 1998, 2008, 2012 and 2016).
  4. Develop, with our industry partners, a Collaborative Innovation and Learning Lab (CILL) on digital governance and welfare-to-work reform.

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