General debt information 107-01000000

Debt servicing includes:

• prevention
• identification
• calculation
• raising
• debt and compensation recovery

The Getting It Right strategy is a key strategy for the organisation. Pay the right person the right payment at the right time under the right program. Debt management enhances the getting it right strategy through customer profiling and risk management strategies. Priorities, delivery arrangements and causes of debts are analysed to target high risk areas.

The agency has a responsibility to protect government revenue by recovering debts efficiently and effectively.

Maintaining customer privacy is a fundamental part of the agency's obligations. See Safeguarding customer privacy when raising and recovering debts, before contacting a customer or issuing a debt notice. Take the appropriate actions to protect the customer's privacy.

Certain debts raised from 1 July 2006 will have a 10% Recovery Fee applied:

• working age customers who do not declare their earnings correctly, may have a recovery fee added to their debt for: refusing or failing to report income, or
• knowingly or recklessly misreporting income from their own exertion, without a reasonable excuse

DMIS is a national database designed for:

• recording
• raising and
• recovering of debts

Reports are available for viewing and/or printing from DMIS.

For information about locating debts in Customer First, see Viewing and updating Interest Charge (IC) via Financial Customer Care in Customer First.

A new Debt application was developed to action overpayments created in Process Direct. This was due to system limitations in the DMIS.

Data transfer to DMIS occurs for debts raised and recovered in Process Direct. This ensures all details of a customer's outstanding balance and status of all debts.