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Centrelink fobbed-off the Commonwealth watchdog last year with a pledge to improve its performance in answering its phones that turned out to be far from the truth. The welfare agency promised the Commonwealth Ombudsman in July 2015 it would expand its "place in queue" telephone service, allowing customers to ask for a call-back and sparing them the commonplace tedium of being put on hold, sometimes for more than an hour. But the Ombudsman's office later found that the service had been "deactivated" earlier that month. The evasion has been revealed in the annual report of the Ombudsman's office, which has been on Centrelink's case for years to try to get the agency to lift its game. In response to Fairfax's questions, Department of Human Services spokesman Hank Jongen did not say why his department had not told the Ombudsman the truth. "The Department ceased its use of Place in Queue in July 2015 to reduce negative impacts on inbound callers to the department not utilising Place in Queue," Mr Jongen said. "The new telephony platform we've rolled out in recent months does provide the department with the capability to make scheduled callbacks. "The department is exploring opportunities to utilise the new technology without negative impacts on callers not utilising the callback capability." The Ombudsman's report also shows thousands more Australians are complaining about the welfare agency's dismal customer service efforts. Centrelink says it has brought down the average time to answer its social security and welfare services phone lines to 15 minutes and 9 seconds in the past financial year, according to the annual report of its parent department Human Services. The department also says it "handled" 56 million phone calls in 2015-2016, although it is not clear how many of those went unanswered. But the Ombudsman received more than 8700 complaints about Centrelink in 2015-206, a 38 per cent increase on the previous year when 6280 people approached the watchdog to complain. Centrelink has been trying for several years to move as many transactions as possible onto its digital channels but the Ombudsman is worried that too many Australians are being left behind. "Efficiency initiatives, such as the diversion of resources to online rather than person-to-person channels and the phasing out of payments by cheque, can save money," the watchdog's annual report noted. "But, as complaints to this office show, these benefits need to be carefully balanced against the potential for increased disadvantage to Centrelink's clients, some of whom have no access to the internet or mobile phones." The Ombudsman is also worried that problems that have been around for years, are not being solved. "This year the office published a follow-up report on recommendations the office had made in 2014 about Centrelink's service delivery," the Ombudsman's report states. "The office found that phone and online services, complaint and review process and records management continue to be key points of frustration." The Ombudsman also noted in its report that Centrelink had told it things in its response to the report that turned out not to be true. "In its response to the updated report [dated July 24, 2015], DHS advised that its facility allowing customers to request a call back, "Place In Queue" (PIQ) would receive additional capacity," according the Ombudsman's report. "However, the office then learned that the PIQ facility was deactivated in July 2015 and that DHS is considering whether it will be reinstated pending the rollout of its managed telecommunications service." Human Services was contacted for comment on Wednesday but did not respond before deadline.

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