W3C is pleased to welcome Department of Human Services as a new member of its community. The Department of Human Services is responsible for the delivery of social and health-related services and payments to the Australian community. The mission of this department is to connect Australians to the services they need.

The department employs around 38,000 people (with more than 70 percent directly delivering services to customers) and touches the lives of 99 percent of Australians over their lifetime. Each year the department delivers approximately $170b in payments to customers and providers annually.

The department services a large number of customers through web browsers (approximately 59.7 million online account transactions) and mobile applications (approximately 36.1 million Express Plus Mobile application transactions).

In the future the department of human services may see a move away from mobile applications and start using HTML5 browser technology on mobile devices, which is where the value of membership to W3C will be realised. W3C aims to help the department to understand the direction of the World Wide Web in order to be agile. As in-built capability increases in end-user computing devices, DHS can start leveraging that to deliver a better service to customers.