Services Australia has further bolstered the government’s online services portal myGov, as the number of Australians out of work continues to climb in the wake of COVID-19.
Government services minister Stuart Robert on Monday said myGov capacity had now climbed to 300,000 concurrent users in a bid to support those seeking welfare services.
This is twice the number of users the portal was able to support after being upgrade in the wake of an outage caused by a massive traffic spike last month.
In preparation for the welfare rush created by coronavirus lockdown measures, myGov had already been upgraded to support around 55,000 users concurrently, up from a base of 6000 users.
“myGov can now take 300,000 concurrent users, whereas two and a half weeks ago it could only take 6000 users,” Robert said in one of many interviews on Monday.
At one point on Monday morning, Robert said there were just shy of 80,000 people using myGov concurrently, with just over 55,000 people using the Centrelink Express Plus app.
It is not clear exactly when the platform was further enhanced by Services Australia. A spokesperson for the minister’s office would not comment.
Australia’s unemployment rate is expected to double to 10 percent as a result of the economic lockdown put in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The unemployment figure has maintained single digits since the economic downturn in the early 1990s.
The performance of myGov, especially the protracted outage caused by an underestimation of the traffic loads by Services Australia, has caused the government continued credibility headaches.
Fresh memories of the online fail, which Robert initially claimed was partially due to a distributed-denial-of-service attack, have hampered efforts to promote a forthcoming COVID tracing app.
Many commentators have questioned whether the government is capable of competently delivering the software and whether assurances about privacy can be taken at face value.