ABSTRACT
The Income Compliance Program (ICP) was a program implemented through Centrelink, the Australian social security agency. Known colloquially as ‘robo-debt’, it was an element in a larger process of digital transformation for the Australian state, linking social welfare, tax, immigration, health and criminal justice agency databases. The ICP is a ‘big data’ system, matching reported income to tax records to raise and recoup welfare overpayments. It became notorious for a ‘reverse onus’: requiring debtors to demonstrate they do not owe money. The design of the algorithm also led, unlawfully, to high numbers of false and inflated debts. The ICP is an instructive instance of neoliberal welfare statecraft, literally occupying the time of welfare claimants. It imposed an ‘active wait’ against a deadline, outsourcing labour previously conducted by Centrelink. Attending to these chronopolitical effects highlights how the ICP as algorithmic governance indicates a collapse in long-standing, hard-fought and widely supported values of welfare state management and administration. This can be demonstrated by reference to the ‘ethical AI’ discourse circulated by state actors in Australia, which reiterates a range of traditional, ‘Whitehall’ normative standards in public service delivery. Crucially, in going ‘beyond’ these norms, the ICP demonstrates their relative paucity and failure to map adequately onto Australia’s contemporary welfare state.
