After the first year of operation of this system, Comcare received an unfavourable audit report on the operation of the Trust Account.
The Audit Office was not satisfied that any reconciliation between incapacity determinations and actual payments was being undertaken. As we had no control over the way customers accessed these funds, it was decided better ways of handling the process had to be found.
In late 1989, a project team was established to set up a system of paying ex-employees direct. At the same time, a method of reimbursing customers for their current employees was developed.
The Department of Finance was chosen as the payroll bureau for the new system and a computer application was designed, built and christened 'Dirpay'.
DoF and Comcare wrote to all departments who had access to the Comcare Trust Account, advising them that the Account was being withdrawn and that all outstanding monies were to be claimed by the last pay of the financial year.
The extent to which this system was impossible to reconcile was only fully revealed after the Account was closed.
Comcare brought the payments of incapacity back into our control by use of the Dirpay system. Through weekly updates to the system from Compense, we ensured all payees were in receipt of the latest determined rate, and the Benefits Payments Team only reimbursed customers for amounts determined.
In January of 1991, we wrote to budget customers who did not use the DoF salaries system, offering to take over all their ex-employees. This exercise added another 800 or so payees to the existing 4000 employees on the Dirpay payroll.