Robodebt: A Socio-Technical Case Study of Public Sector Information Systems Failure

Large-scale public sector information systems (PSIS) that administer social welfare payments face considerable challenges. . Between 2014 and 2023, an Australian government agency conceived and implemented the Online Compliance Intervention (OCI) scheme, widely referred to as Robodebt. . The scheme's primary purpose was to apply digital transformation in order to reduce labour costs and increase recovery of overpayments. . Among its key features were a simplified, but inherently erroneous, estimation method called income averaging, and a new requirement that welfare recipients produce documentation for income earned years earlier. . Failure by welfare recipients to comply with mandates resulted in the agency recovering what it asserted to be overpayments. . This article presents a case study of Robodebt and its effects on over 1 million of its clients. . The detailed case study relies on primary data through Senate and other government hearings and commissions, and secondary data, such as media reports, supplemented by academic sources. . Relevant technical features include (1) the reliance on the digital persona that the agency maintains for each client, (2) computer-performed inferencing from client data, and (3) automated decision-making and subsequent action. . This article employs a socio-technical systems approach to understanding the factors underlying a major PSIS project failure, by focusing on the system's political and public service sponsors; its participants (users); the people affected by it (usees); and the broader economic, social, and political context. . Practical and theoretical insights are presented, with the intention of highlighting major practical lessons for PSIS, and the relevance of an articulated socio-technical frame for PSIS. .