Updating debt Reference Data Facility (RDF) tables for emergency events 107-23042724

Debt raising and recovery can be paused for customers in disaster-impacted areas. Services Australia use postcode exclusions or a national exclusion to implement this, such as during the activation of the:

• Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment (AGDRP)
• Disaster Recovery Allowance (DRA)

Coding the RDF tables with the impacted location postcodes or extending emergency events, must be done manually. The following 3 tables are used for emergency events:

• DMN.EMG.Postcodes table has the impacted postcodes recorded. Only customers with an address in those postcodes can have Situational Hardship provisions applied. Customers with addresses in these recorded postcodes are excluded from the following recovery actions:
• Tax Garnishee
• Automatic over-recovery re-allocation
• Further interest charge being applied
• DMN.Debt.Recovery.Pause table stores the switch that determines whether Situational Hardship is ‘ON’ or Disaster automatic write off functionality is ‘ON’. It also holds the configuration details for each Debt Recovery pause.
• DMN.Sus.Auto.Det.Raise.Debt table pauses some automatic debt raising activities and activates flexible due date and informal account payable functionality. This table also has the impacted postcodes recorded. This table does not affect Families debts or Child Care Subsidy (CCS) reconciliation debts, which have separate mechanisms for pausing debts during emergencies

The Treatment Pathway tool affects debts in Process Direct. It streamlines response to emergencies. It also provides a way to specialise recovery treatments for individual or groups of customers.

The functionality is facilitated by rules, rule sets, cohorts and campaigns where a:

• ‘rule’ dictates the changed recovery action
• ‘rule set’ is a collection of rules
• ‘cohort’ is a group of customers, as defined by business rules
• ‘campaign’ is the encompassing reason for wanting to change recovery