Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question:

(1) (a) On 31 December 2011 the number of Australian Taxation Office (ATO) employees with an open, accepted case with Comcare was 595 or 2.4% of total employees1.

(b) On 31 March 2012 the number of ATO employees with an open, accepted case with Comcare was 599 or 2.4% of total employees1.

(c) On 30 June 2012 the number of ATO employees with an open, accepted case with Comcare was 645 or 2.6% of total employees1.

(2) As at 31 July 2012, the total number of ATO employees (including ongoing, non-ongoing and casual employees) was 24,764.

(3) No, ATO staff do not have individual workload targets. A range of criteria are used to measure individual staff performance, depending on the type of work undertaken. For example, service representatives in ATO contact centres are assessed and managed under our coaching framework. This framework covers a range of metrics including timeliness, service and the quality of information provided to a caller. The performance of a service representative during a call is assessed against agreed performance expectations. The agreed performance expectations are based on research into industry best practice combined with our own internal expectations such as the ATO values and codes of conduct.

(4) As per response to question 3 above, individual processing targets are not applied.

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1The percentage of employees with an open, accepted Comcare case is based on the ATO total employees at that date. Total employees includes ongoing, non-ongoing and casual employees.