Coronavirus: MyGov website wobbles remain as jobs are axed
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert has failed to get the myGov website working for thousands of Australians.
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert has failed to get the MyGov website working for thousands of Australians whose jobs are on the chopping block, as queues continued around Centrelink offices.
There was no confirmation on Tuesday as to when MyGov would become stable as it faces unprecedented demand, with Mr Robert conceding it was “my bad” for not realising how many people would try to access it.
He also acknowledged he had “jumped the gun” in blaming the site’s crashes on a cyber attack when in reality it could not handle the number of people trying to use the service on Monday.
“We normally get 6000 users. We prepared over the weekend for 55,000. I didn’t think I’d have to prepare for 100,000 concurrent users,” Mr Robert told 2GB.
“It was my bad for not realising that the sheer scale of the decision on Sunday night by the national leaders that literally saw hundreds and hundreds of thousands, maybe a million, people unemployed overnight.”
Mr Robert did not answer questions from The Australian on how long he had been preparing for an influx of Centrelink applications, why more than 55,000 could not access MyGov on Monday and how many extra phone centre workers the government would employ to help.
Services Australia said the government had facilitated 3.2 million logins to MyGov over the previous 20 hours and would progressively increase capacity.
“Services Australia is rapidly deploying more staff, including hiring staff as quickly as they can. Redeployed staff are answering calls currently and more staff are being trained,” a spokesman said. “New staff are also being trained and will start to come on board from Monday.”
Social Services Minister Anne Ruston said she’d been advised by Mr Robert that MyGov could manage 150,000 concurrent users on Tuesday.
From Monday, people did not need to go to a Centrelink office to provide proof of ID to become eligible for welfare payments.
“The changes came into place which require you only to provide proof of identity over the phone,” Senator Ruston said.
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