BASC Voucher Scheme Reporting Woes

OOSH Services around NSW received an email from the Department of Education in recent days alerting them to one or more errors in their submission of the $500 BASC Voucher reporting tool, and directing them to amend and resubmit.

Incredibly, one of the possible errors highlighted is that dates are in the DD-MM-YYYY format, instead of the supposedly “correct” MM-DD-YYYY format. This is despite:

1. The DD-MM-YYYY format being the well -established date reporting format in Australia;

2. The DD-MM-YYYY format being explicitly demonstrated in the Department’s own webinars explaining how to use this supposedly simple tool; and

3. The Department’s own tool defaulting to the DD-MM-YYYY format.

Rather than waste more of OOSH Educators’ limited time in “correcting” this error, Network recommends you take no action for now. We are actively advocating on your behalf for a technical solution at the Department level to fix a mistake of their own making.

The handling of the Voucher scheme has been embarrassing from the start and shown an utter lack of respect for the essential workers and the community of volunteer parents and socially minded small businesses who are members of Network.

We hope that the Department and the Minister will finally heed Network’s calls to drop this deeply flawed reporting system entirely and in the future consult with us before these mistakes are repeated.

Watch this space.

See Network’s past stories on the NSW BASC Voucher Scheme