THE AUSTRALIAN DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES
NOTICE OF DATA MATCHING PROGRAMME
Under the current Memorandum of Understanding between the Australian Transaction Reporting and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) and the Department of Human Services (Human Services), specific financial transaction and financial reporting data is shared.
The AUSTRAC data match will enable Human Services to identify social welfare recipients who may not have appropriately disclosed their correct income and asset status.
The details will be electronically matched with specific Human Services data holdings, to identify non-compliance with income or other reporting obligations. Records exceeding 5,000 individuals will be matched.
- Human Services holds approximately 7 million unique records in its welfare payment database. AUSTRAC reports in excess of 84 million financial transactions per annum. Records exceeding 5,000 individuals will be matched.
- The approximate match figure will be significant. Based on case selection criteria Human Services expects to examine more than 10,000 records.
- The classes of people who may be affected by this program will include welfare recipients who appear to have unexplained wealth, income and assets.
- Analysis of the results of data matching of AUSTRAC data holdings will identify non-compliance and fraud and form the basis of intervention activities such as investigations and administrative action.
Human Services have prepared a protocol document describing this program in collaboration with AUSTRAC. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has provided comments to the Department about this protocol. A copy of this document is available from:
Serious Non-compliance Branch
Louisa Lawson Building
25 Cowlishaw Street
Greenway ACT
The Department’s Privacy Policy may be accessed at humanservices.gov.au
Human Services has developed this data matching program protocol under the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Guidelines on Data Matching in Australian Government Administration which includes standards for data matching to protect the privacy of individuals and the security of information.