(1)   In respect of the new Centrelink website, Customer Services Online, will he provide details of: (a) all costs associated with development and maintenance and the total cost; and (b) the number of users that have accessed the website (i) daily, (ii) weekly and (iii) monthly.

(2)   In respect of the main Centrelink website, will he provide details of: (a) the number of users that access the main Centrelink website (i) daily, (ii) weekly and (iii) monthly; (b) the number of occasions the website has been offline since 2005 (i) intentionally and (ii) unintentionally and (iii) the length of time the website was not functioning; (c) the primary reason for each unintentional outage; and (d) the number of complaints received by Centrelink about each unintentional outage.

(3)   In respect of the online services available through the main Centrelink website: (a) how many online services and forms are available to customers; (b) how many customers have registered for online services (i) each month since the website’s inception; (c) what is the current number of registered customers; and (d) how many forms have been submitted by customers for each online service since January 2005.

(1)  

(a)   There are no maintenance costs to date as the site is still under development. The total development cost for the 2005-06 financial year was $2,143,103 and the cost for the 2006-07 financial year to 30 September is $490,629.

(b)    

Month (2006)	Avg per Day (i)	Avg per Week (ii)	Per Month (iii)
June	21	147	648
July	19	133	591
August	238	1,666	7,382
September	960	6,720	28,804

(2) (a)  

Month (2006)	Avg per Day (i)	Avg per Week (ii)	Per month (iii)
January	24,801	173,607	768,831
February	25,886	181,202	724,816
March	25,117	175,819	778,648
April	20,906	146,342	627,199
May	23,304	163,128	722,425
June	27,203	190,421	816,095
July	34,238	239,666	1,061,387
August	29,775	208,425	923,051
September	29,590	207,130	887,707

                                                 

(b) (i)   Records have not been kept as to the specific reason for website outages. They have predominantly been due to hardware or software upgrades (i.e. intentional)

(ii)   As per response to 2 (b) (i)

(iii)   The table below shows the length of time the website was not functioning for each outage:

Outage Date	Duration (in hours: minutes) (iii)
16 March 2005	00:08
22 April 2005	00:09
24 August 2005	02:54
25 August 2005	01:55
20 September 2005	00:09
26 October 2005	00:08
25 November 2005	00:09
16 December 2005	00:20
16 March 2006	00:15
22 March 2006	00:05
6 April 2006	00:05
12 April 2006	00:06
16 April 2006	15:55
17 April 2006	15:55
18 April 2006	09:40
16 June 2006	00:09
24 September 2006	00:05

                                                 

(c)   As per response to 2 (b) (i)

(d)   As per response to 2 (b) (i)

(3) (a)   There are 55 online services available to customers and all Centrelink forms are available on the Centrelink website.

(b)   (i)  

Month	First Registration
November 02	444
December 02	1,354
January 03	611
February 03	599
March 03	748
April 03	1,757
May 03	2,497
June 03	4,444
July 03	19,593
August 03	22,130
September 03	13,823
October 03	10,432
November 03	6,679
December 03	8,129
January 04	8,946
February 04	8,060
March 04	10,014
April 04	8,451
May 04	15,990
June 04	54,621
July 04	30,706
August 04	13,963
September 04	23,956
October 04	11,828
November 04	21,501
December 04	21,870
January 05	18,840
February 05	22,165
March 05	26,070
April 05	22,639
May 05	23,013
June 05	45,402
July 05	43,304
August 05	33,338
September 05	28,224
October 05	30,523
November 05	29,484
December 05	28,937
January 06	36,857
February 06	41,520
March 06	50,816
April 06	44,251
May 06	62,371
June 06	64,963
July 06	50,320
August 06	41,667
September 06	40,630

                 

(c)   As at 22 September 2006, 1,180,868 customers have a password to use Centrelink’s on-line services.

(d)   Not all services provided online by Centrelink replace a previous form.

From the period January 2005 to 31 July 2006, Centrelink customers have updated their records 13 million times.

With respect to claims submitted on-line since January 2006, customers have submitted:

• 11,975 Claims for a Newborn Child (introduced December 2005);
• 38,208 Claims for a Student (introduced April 2005); and
• 1,490 Claims for a New Apprenticeship or Traineeship (introduced April 2005).

   To prepare this answer it has taken 26 hours and 25 minutes at an estimated cost of $1337.