Services Australia No Jab No Pay

To implement the Federal Government’s ‘No Jab No Pay’ policy, SYPAQ helped develop a new interface that enabled the easy exchange of information between immunisation and Centrelink databases.

SYPAQ was engaged as part of the Services Australia (formerly Department of Human Services) Agile Team. We occupied leading roles as the Technical Lead and Senior Developers for the development and delivery of the No Jab No Pay and Healthy Start for School project in the New Parent and Child Care (NPCC) Systems Section.

The legislative measure of ‘No Jab No Pay’ was to cease the child immunisation requirement for Family Tax Benefit (FTB) Part A annual supplement and introduce the child immunisation requirement for the FTB Part A ongoing daily rate. To support this legislative requirement, the Australian Immunisation Register and Centrelink are required to exchange a new set of immunisation information. The NPCC Section is responsible for maintaining this interface between the Australian Immunisation Register and Centrelink.

This was one of the first Services Australia Projects to adopt an agile framework approach end to end and use Jira (an agile status tracking tool).

Jira was used to track the project backlog, burndown/up charts and provide a Kanban environment for visualising workflow, allowing the team to maximise efficiency by limiting the volume of work in progress to only that required.

In addition to the provision of specialist technical skills and direct contributions to the development effort, SYPAQ coached the Services Australia Team in the agile framework by developing the backlog stated in the System Requirements Specification, and then prioritising and allocating the backlog to the project Sprints. SYPAQ also provided training to the Services Australia team in the effective use of the Jira tool.

As a key enabler to the successful delivery of this complex program of work, SYPAQ also coordinated and acted as a liaison between the Australian Immunisation Register and Centrelink by performing inter-agency testing to ensure effective verification and validation of stakeholder needs.

The Australian Childhood Immunisation Register was successfully expanded to capture and report on children’s immunisation status for payments up to, and including, 19 years of age.