Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Centrelink'

Agencification-the creation of autonomous agencies within the public service-has been occurring in many jurisdictions. It has usually had a rationale of improving the way in which government works. Generally, agencies are expected to provide more flexible, performance-oriented, responsive public services. The purpose of this work is to examine a particular example of agencification in the Australian Public Service (APS) and to compare it analytically with similar occurrences elsewhere. Specifically, it will examine the splitting of the former Department of Social Security (DSS) into two separate organisations, a policy department and a service delivery agency operating under a purchaser-provider arrangement, Centrelink. It will do this in the context of theories of agencification and of practical experience of agencification elsewhere. It will analyse why agencification has happened in this case and what the experience has shown, focusing on the role, governance, accountability and prospects for the new arrangements. This, the most prominent and substantial case of agencification in the Australian government, will be compared with the agencification experience reported in other jurisdictions-the United Kingdom and New Zealand. It will address why Centrelink came about, what the outcome has been of the change in institutional arrangements, and what the likely future is of the Centrelink arrangements. It will show that, when examined closely, the mechanisms bringing about agencification have been diverse. However, there are parallels in the experience. This leads to a conclusion that the current Centrelink arrangements are not stable in the long term, and some aspects-such as the purchaser-provider arrangement - should be set aside.

This thesis is about current Centrelink breach and appeal figures. It is also about the current conservative neo-liberalising climate of Australian social policy reforms, with which they are inextricably connected. It shows that while Centrelink breach numbers have increased more than three fold since 1996, formal appeals against Centrelink decisions have not increased similarly. This thesis asks: what might this mean? It answers this question through a single case study of a Centrelink office. Data was collected using individual focused interviews, documents collected from the site, and direct observation (including a map of the office drawn by the researcher). Various possible interpretations drawn from the social policy literature were evaluated in relation to the case study findings. Interpretations included the neo-liberals, advocates, new-contractualism, the view that surveillance is oppressive and an interpretation that draws from the work of Michel Foucault. The thesis found that Foucault's work on discipline and governmentality - particularly his ideas about surveillance and individualisation-was the most relevant interpretation of Centrelink breaching and appeals to the case study data. Much evidence was found for these governing techniques, and their imperfection. The thesis concludes that the current conservative neo-liberal based reforms, including the new breach regime, show undue confidence about their ability to govern individual Centrelink clients.

Contact with the Australian social security and human service provider Centrelink offers opportunities for vital support, both financial and social. However, it can also invoke significant challenges, particularly where people struggle to relate and to make their voices heard. Centrelink has been criticised extensively as beset by machine-like bureaucratic processes, stigmatising ‘participation’ expectations, intrusive compliance interactions and a customer service framework inadequate for the serious needs of people seeking assistance. There has been extensive research attention to constrictive aspects of the Centrelink context. In keeping with this, interest in the small but significant body of social workers in Centrelink has largely focused on their struggles to maintain professional discretion and insulate themselves from challenging organisational surroundings. There has been less attention to alternative directions and organisational attempts to develop more freedom around relating in service situations despite recognition of the need for such. This dissertation addresses a gap in understanding by considering the relational challenge in Centrelink with reference to some alternative developments which have attempted to draw on social workers to guide service provision towards supportive relationships.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Human Services and Social Work
Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology
Full Text

Processes of social work engagement with the reforming state in Australia: The case of Centrelink This thesis provides an account of processes of social work engagement with the reforming state in Australia. The thesis focuses on the embedding and intensification of activation reforms into income support and employment services policy and the development through new public management (NPM) strategies of an individualised service delivery culture in the Australian federal government agency Centrelink during the period 1997 to the close of 2007. Central to this thesis is an interest in performative aspects of social work identity, as well as ways in which organisational control was pursued through intentional efforts to regulate the identity of its employees to ensure their responsiveness towards achieving contested welfare policy reforms. The study draws upon a particular articulation of the theoretical framework of performativity to explore processes of regulation at the level of the organisation and at the level of individual workers. The study informing this thesis analyses narratives from two sets of agents: politicians and former members of the Centrelink Executive and eleven highly experienced social workers from all levels of the Centrelink hierarchy who participated in the transformation of this public service agency through NPM reform and welfare policy reform process. The focus of the study is on reflexive processes of coming into being, specifically how these two sets of agents interpreted and responded to interactive social and regulative processes of identity formation within this restructured organisational and policy context. The thesis extends current understandings of the effect of ubiquitous NPM and welfare policy reforms on social workers through shedding light on the processes by which social workers become or are produced in particular organisational and policy contexts. This thesis explores the way social work and public service values and commitments were constructed and contested throughout a period of transformational change. Keywords: social work, organisational regulation, Centrelink, performativity

This thesis seeks to understand how government service delivery agencies can develop more individualised solutions for citizens through new kinds of relationships or ‘social partnerships’ across sectors. Specifically it examines how Centrelink, the Australian Government’s largest service delivery agency is working across other government, the not-for—profit and business sectors to reduce social exclusion and to increase participation opportunities for people on income support.

In the past three years, the number of breach penalties applied by Centrelink to welfare recipients have more than trebled, with some 349,000 incidences reported for the 2000-2001 year. This Masters Degree research study examines the lived experience of some individuals who have been breached by Centrelink, to ascertain whether their lived experiences accord with the stated policy expectations and intent of the Howard Government. Government policy statements are identified from the literature, as are a range of alternative viewpoints and critiques offered by commentators. A qualitative research survey instrument was developed. Survey data was collected from people passing on the footpath outside three Brisbane Centrelink offices. Fifty-six individuals who stated they had been breached at least once responded. The results of primary and secondary analysis of the collected data is presented in the findings, followed by discussion as to how the lived experiences of the unemployed respondents matched Government expectation and intent

This study is an exploration of a change management intervention tool described here as the Hypothetical'. This tool is not described in organisation literature, but many of its functions and features can be found in theories relating to, for example, organisational communication, change management, leadership and team dynamics. The Hypothetical does, however, appear as a discussion forum in the popular media. In the 1980s and 1990s, the high profile television program, Hypotheticals, hosted by Geoffrey Robertson QC, dramatised decision making processes, and teased out some of the moral dilemmas inherent in social and political problems, utilising high profile panelists from the social, political and business elites. In the 1990s, the Hypothetical made a transition from the television screen to the management meeting room and the executive suite. The researcher of this study has similarly used the Hypothetical in his capacity as a communications consultant for a number of public and private client organisations. With this background, this study was undertaken to explore the Hypothetical and to identify those functions and features that define its appropriateness as an intervention for organisational communication and change. The findings from this study are founded on two aspects a review of relevant organisation literature, and data from the presentation of a specific Hypothetical intervention to the public organisation Centrelink Queensland. The Hypothetical tool, as identified in this study, is a one-off, 90 minute performance involving a facilitator, audience, and members of a panel who represent the organisation in which semi-fictitious storylines are meant to symbolise elements in the cultural life of the organisation. The study also identifies a Hypothetical process in which research methods that are applied, before and after the intervention performance, help to identify the functions and features of the intervention. The features of the Hypothetical, as an intervention are viewed through the lens of Goffman's 1959) classic theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism, where the organisation is conceptualised as 'theatre', and the motivations and actions of its members are interpreted through the symbolism of theatrical performance and interaction. The study also draws on symbolic convergence theory to explain what happens inside an organisation through the language, conflicts and shared cultural experiences of its members. The Centrelink Hypothetical in this study reflects aspects of the shared organisational culture, and presents its fictitious storylines in the context of dialogues between its panelists. The panelists are representatives of their organisation and are heard reflecting the values of that organisation's culture. Consequently, the analysis of text through the Hypothetical transcript the deciphering of shared narratives, mindsets, motivations and visions of the future, and so forth forms a significant aspect of the study for conceptualising Centrelink organisational culture, and for identifying how problems of communication and change have become embedded in that culture. More specifically, it is through the Centrelink Hypothetical that this study seeks to identify the functions of the Hypothetical and to determine how they may contribute solutions to Centrelink's management problems. The literature consulted for this study reveals that the Hypothetical is closely allied, as an intervention process, with the relatively new management practice of scenario planning. It scenario planning that attempts to build a generative learning capability within organisations a continuously looping process of deep learning that takes place within each organisation's unique strategic conversation. This study draws on scenario planing to identify similar performance features within the Hypothetical process stimulating the organisation to be responsive to, and to embrace, change; finding appropriate methods of communication; identifying and modifying mental models. This study also highlights a significant difference between the scenario planning process and the Hypothetical. Emerging literature in management psychology asserts the importance of the emotionally intelligent team, which demonstrates its social skills and empathy. However, the driving force behind scenario planning is 'the business idea', or the organisation's mental model and what drives it, and there is little or no attention paid to the importance of emotional capabilities in the scenario planning literature. Findings from the Centrelink case demonstrate that a significant dimension of the Hypothetical experience is the impact of symbolically convergent scripted roles and the related capacity to utilise emotional intelligence. Consequently, this study recommends that suitable emotional frameworks be employed throughout the Hypothetical process to help discern appropriate members' behaviours and suggest how the combination of such behaviours may be used to enhance the organisation's future generative learning process.

This study is an exploration of a change management intervention tool described here as the Hypothetical'. This tool is not described in organisation literature, but many of its functions and features can be found in theories relating to, for example, organisational communication, change management, leadership and team dynamics. The Hypothetical does, however, appear as a discussion forum in the popular media. In the 1980s and 1990s, the high profile television program, Hypotheticals, hosted by Geoffrey Robertson QC, dramatised decision making processes, and teased out some of the moral dilemmas inherent in social and political problems, utilising high profile panelists from the social, political and business elites. In the 1990s, the Hypothetical made a transition from the television screen to the management meeting room and the executive suite. The researcher of this study has similarly used the Hypothetical in his capacity as a communications consultant for a number of public and private client organisations. With this background, this study was undertaken to explore the Hypothetical and to identify those functions and features that define its appropriateness as an intervention for organisational communication and change. The findings from this study are founded on two aspects a review of relevant organisation literature, and data from the presentation of a specific Hypothetical intervention to the public organisation Centrelink Queensland. The Hypothetical tool, as identified in this study, is a one-off, 90 minute performance involving a facilitator, audience, and members of a panel who represent the organisation in which semi-fictitious storylines are meant to symbolise elements in the cultural life of the organisation. The study also identifies a Hypothetical process in which research methods that are applied, before and after the intervention performance, help to identify the functions and features of the intervention. The features of the Hypothetical, as an intervention are viewed through the lens of Goffman's 1959) classic theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism, where the organisation is conceptualised as 'theatre', and the motivations and actions of its members are interpreted through the symbolism of theatrical performance and interaction. The study also draws on symbolic convergence theory to explain what happens inside an organisation through the language, conflicts and shared cultural experiences of its members. The Centrelink Hypothetical in this study reflects aspects of the shared organisational culture, and presents its fictitious storylines in the context of dialogues between its panelists. The panelists are representatives of their organisation and are heard reflecting the values of that organisation's culture. Consequently, the analysis of text through the Hypothetical transcript the deciphering of shared narratives, mindsets, motivations and visions of the future, and so forth forms a significant aspect of the study for conceptualising Centrelink organisational culture, and for identifying how problems of communication and change have become embedded in that culture. More specifically, it is through the Centrelink Hypothetical that this study seeks to identify the functions of the Hypothetical and to determine how they may contribute solutions to Centrelink's management problems. The literature consulted for this study reveals that the Hypothetical is closely allied, as an intervention process, with the relatively new management practice of scenario planning. It scenario planning that attempts to build a generative learning capability within organisations a continuously looping process of deep learning that takes place within each organisation's unique strategic conversation. This study draws on scenario planing to identify similar performance features within the Hypothetical process stimulating the organisation to be responsive to, and to embrace, change; finding appropriate methods of communication; identifying and modifying mental models. This study also highlights a significant difference between the scenario planning process and the Hypothetical. Emerging literature in management psychology asserts the importance of the emotionally intelligent team, which demonstrates its social skills and empathy. However, the driving force behind scenario planning is 'the business idea', or the organisation's mental model and what drives it, and there is little or no attention paid to the importance of emotional capabilities in the scenario planning literature. Findings from the Centrelink case demonstrate that a significant dimension of the Hypothetical experience is the impact of symbolically convergent scripted roles and the related capacity to utilise emotional intelligence. Consequently, this study recommends that suitable emotional frameworks be employed throughout the Hypothetical process to help discern appropriate members' behaviours and suggest how the combination of such behaviours may be used to enhance the organisation's future generative learning process.

Diabetic retinopathy is an eye disease that causes blindness amongst many people with diabetes if left untreated. When the eye is affected, various changes in the blood vessels occur. To be able to observe these changes over time, images of the back of the eye called retinograms are acquired. Automated analysis of retinograms becomes important as the number of people afflicted with diabetes increases worldwide. A diabetic retinopathy detection system should be able to analyse retinograms, interpret them and record the changes over time. The methods associated with blood vessel detection in retinograms have a common drawback which is that small vessels that have low contrast are normally missed out during detection. Evaluation of these methods is commonly carried out using a technique which has the drawback of having a bias towards the detection of thick vessels. In this thesis a retinal vessel detection method is proposed which is capable of detecting blood vessels of different width, length and orientation in the back of the eye. The state-of-the-art method proves to be comparable to the existing methods applied to the same images used in this project. When applied for segmenting the whole vessel network, it achieves an area under the ROC curve (Az) of 0.960(±0.0021)599 compared to the best result of 0.9722 obtained via another method. When applied for vessel centreline detection, it achieves an Az of 0.977(±0.0013)66 which is higher than the best method with an Az of 0.967(±0.0017). These results are obtained using an evaluation method proposed in this project that eliminates the drawback of current evaluation methods hence removes the bias towards the detection of thick vessels.

This thesis deals with design and implementation of an algorithm for segmentation of ribs from thoracic CT data. For the segmentation method of rib centerlines detection is chosen. The first step of this approach is to extract the centerlines of all the bones located in the scan. These centerlines are divided into short primitives, which are subsequently classified into couple of categories, depending on whether they represent the centerline of the rib. Subsequently, the centrelines of ribs are used as the seed points of the region growing algorithm in three-dimensional space, which realizes the final segmentation of the ribs. Within the work, a database of 10 CT scans was manually annotated, which was subsequently used to validate a performance of the proposed segmentation approach. The achieved success rate of primitive classification is 96,7 %, the success rate of rib segmentation (Dice coefficient) is 86,8 %.

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.
My study is part of an ARC linkage project between University of Technology, Sydney and Centrelink Australia, which aims to applying data mining techniques to optimise the debt detection and debt recovery. A debt indicates an overpayment made by the government to a customer who is not entitled to that payment. In social security, an interaction between a customer and the government department is recorded as an activity. Each customer’s activities happen sequentially along the time, which can be regarded as a sequence. Based on the experience of debt detection experts, there are usually some patterns in the sequence of activities of customers who commit debts. The patterns indicating the customers’ intention to be overpaid can thus be used to discover or predict debt occurrence. The development of debt detection and recovery over sequential transaction data, however, is a challenging problem due to following reasons. (1) The size of transaction data is vast, and the transaction data are being generated continuously as the business goes on. (2) Transaction data are always time stamped by the business system, and the temporal order of the transaction data is highly related to the business logic. (3) The patterns and relationships hidden behind the transaction data may be affected by a lot of factors. They are not only dependent on business domain knowledge, but also subject to seasonal and social factors outside the business. Based on a survey of existing methods on debt detection and recovery, data mining techniques are studied in this thesis to detect and recovery debt in an adaptive and efficient fashion. Firstly, sequence data is used to model the evolvement of customer activities, and the sequential patterns generalize the trends of sequences. For long running sequence classification issues, even if the sequences come from the same source, the sequential patterns may vary from time to time. An adaptive sequential classification model is to be built to make the sequence classification adapt to the sequential pattern variation. The model is applied to 15,931 activity sequences from Centrelink which includes 849,831 activity records. The experimental results show that the proposed adaptive sequence classification framework performs effectively on the continuously arriving data. Secondly, a new technique of sequence classification using both positive and negative patterns is to be studied, which is able to find the relationship between activity sequences and debt occurrences and also the impact of oncoming activities on the debt occurrence. The same dataset is used for the evaluation. The outcome shows if built with the same number of rules, in terms of recall, the classifier built with both positive and negative rules outperforms traditional classifiers with only positive rules under most conditions. Finally, decision trees are to be built in the thesis to model debt recovery and predict the response of customers if contacted by phone. The customer contact strategy driven by the model aims to improve the efficiency of debt recovery process. The model is utilized in a real life pilot project for debt recovery in Centrelink. The pilot result outperforms the traditional random customer selection. In summary, this thesis studies debt detection and debt recovery in social security using data mining techniques. The proposed models are novel and effective, showing potentials in real business.

This study researched the impact of changes in welfare legislation in Australia that have occurred since July 2006 relative to people receiving government financial assistance or payments via Centrelink (Harding, Vu, Percival & Beer 2005). The reasons for legislative change are broadly discussed narrowing down to the issues these changes raise for single parents and for organisations. The research gathered the views of parents with dependents including sole parents concentrating on the challenges they face and the support they require in their transition back into the workforce. Sole parents are recipients of welfare to aid them in maintaining a household with dependent children and thus are affected by Welfare-to-Work legislation and Mutual Obligations requirements. The key area investigated was whether organisations are implementing work life balance and family friendly work practices that particularly address the needs of sole parents.

This work investigated a numerical approach to the search of a maximum heat transfer rate density (the overall heat transfer dissipated per unit of volume) from a two-dimensional laminar multiscale array of cylinders in cross-flow under an applied fixed pressure drop and subject to the constraint of fixed volume. It was furthermore assumed that the flow field was steady state and incompressible. The configuration had two degrees of freedom in the stationary state, that is, the spacing between the cylinders and the diameter of the smaller cylinders. The angular velocity of the cylinders was in the range 0 ≤ ϖ, ≤ 0.1. Two cylinders of different diameters were used, in the first case, the cylinders were aligned along a plane which lay on their centrelines. In the second case, the cylinder leading edge was aligned along the plane that received the incoming fluid at the same time. The diameter of the smaller cylinder was fixed at the optimal diameter obtained when the cylinders were stationary. Tests were conducted for co-rotating and counterrotating cylinders. The results were also compared with results obtained in the open literature and the trend was found to be the same. Results showed that the heat transfer from a rotating array of cylinders was enhanced in certain cases and this was observed for both directions of rotation from an array which was aligned on the centreline. For rotating cylinders with the same leading edge, there is heat transfer suppression and hence the effect of rotation on the maximum heat transfer rate density is insignificant. This research is important in further understanding of heat transfer from rotating cylinders, which can be applied to applications ranging from contact cylinder dryers in the chemical processes industry and rotating cylinder electrodes to devices used for roller hearth furnaces.
Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2011.
Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering
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