Establishing the Local Liaison Officer network was one of the Minister's first priorities for the new Department. This program was established to improve the level of support and advice provided to customers who take their service delivery query or complaint to their local MP.

Every Member of the House of Representatives and Senator has been allocated an LLO from one of the six agencies in their local area. This provides an additional mechanism to Members and Senators for the resolution of any bottlenecks with regard to constituent inquiries.

With just one person initially working on this full time and, later, one person working on it part time, we have been able to draw on the network of the agencies to provide a fast and very personalised service to every Member of Parliament.

The LLO Program has been highly successful. In its first 12 months around 4,600 queries have been referred to the LLO network by Members of Parliament. With the exception of only 14, all queries have been responded to within two working days.

As at the end of January 2006, 97 per cent (145) of the Members of the House of Representatives and 62 per cent (47) of current Senators have utilised the LLO program.

The first task for DHS was to build a network of contacts in the agencies. These agency contacts were required to undertake any internal consultation required within their own agencies and present a coherent and agreed agency perspective to DHS (Centrelink had a good foundation already in place).

Development of the LLO program involved both one-on-one discussions between DHS and individual agencies, as well as combined forums when all agency representatives met to discuss the project. At all times DHS' leadership role and responsibility for delivering the LLO program was clear with the LLO Project Manager as a virtual team leader.

The Project Manager in DHS sought to give agency contacts as much autonomy as possible in tailoring the requirements of the program to their own agency's operations. In practical terms this meant that while there were certain non-negotiable elements of the program, agencies were given leeway to develop agency specific responses to some aspects of the program where this flexibility did not threaten to compromise the consistency and quality of the LLO network.

Not only has the LLO program been a way to improve services to MPs and their constituents, it has provided a network for DHS to use in obtaining information and feedback from staff at the front line.