Social Services secretary Kathryn Campbell has said mistakes in public service delivery can be blown out of proportion by social media and conceded that citizens should have been consulted more to avoid the "robodebt" debacle.
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In a frank speech to the Institute of Public Administration Australia on Wednesday, the former secretary of the Department of Human Services, who was at the helm when the controversial debt recovery program was rolled out, said most services delivered by government "go boringly well".
"Most of the time we do get that service delivery right, but the confidence in delivery is something that needs to be constantly monitored. Social media means that a small failure in service delivery will be blown out of proportion sometimes and become a big issue quickly," Ms Campbell said.
"We need immediate and well publicised service recovery in those cases to make sure that things are back on track."
Ms Campbell addressed the robodebt debacle of early 2017 in a wry fashion, but admitted that it showed "co-design" wasn't just a buzzword, but that citizens needed to be involved when policies are rolled out.
Under the policy, recipients of Centrelink payments had the information they had declared to the agency automatically matched to earnings data provided to the tax office, and when there was a mismatch, letters were sent out telling them they could have a debt.
"We didn't do quite as much co-design as we should have, and it became apparent quickly," Ms Campbell said.
While the intent of the policy was for people to engage with the policy early, instead some people only realised they could have a debt when they were approached by debt collectors, the secretary said. According to Ms Campbell, because the issues gained media attention over the quiet summer period, it quickly became the main story.
"That's another lesson, try not to roll things out in January because there is not much other media going on and you find yourself ... the only headline in town. I kept on thinking 'where are those cricketers when you need them doing something naughty?' They were well behaved that year so we ran the media."
The department learnt lessons from the Senate inquiry and Ombudsman's report, with some concerns addressed immediately, while others were addressed over the long term.
Involving the public in planning was vital, Ms Campbell said, telling the anecdote of a letter worked on by both herself and the minister at the time, that was showed to members of the public as part of consultation and "they hated it".
"It was a very powerful lesson that we thought we were explaining it properly but we weren't," Ms Campbell said.
The months of media attention were described as "a pretty tough time" for public servants in the department, and Ms Campbell singled out Health Secretary Glenys Beachamp, Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo and former defence secretary Dennis Richardson as those who had supported her through the time.
The speech also addressed issues with the National Disability Insurance Agency, which Ms Campbell said had a satisfaction level of 88 per cent.
"Some of you might be a bit surprised that it's so high because you might have seen some media reporting," Ms Campbell said.
"We continue of course to focus on that 12 per cent who aren't satisfied but we do sometimes take one story or one episode and roll it out more broadly when in fact that's not the case."
Ms Campbell said the lessons learnt from both the disability insurance scheme and the robodebt issue showed that service delivery departments and sections needed to be involved in the development of policy in early planning stages, as those public servants had more knowledge of what the public expected from a policy.
