The crackdown has led to a spate of resignations and the Child Support Agency is reviewing a number of breaches as it considers whether or not to press criminal charges against former employees.
The reports come a year after a series of sackings at Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office, where hundreds of staff were caught accessing client records that they were not authorised to view.
Child Support Agency general manager Matt Miller said breaches by employees were uncovered after its fraud detection systems were strengthened in November last year.
The software has since been used to audit 45,000 client records, with three confirmed cases of improper access detected and one possible instance still under investigation.
"The Child Support Agency places paramount importance on customer privacy and has zero tolerance of unauthorised access of customer records," general manager Matt Miller said.
"Of the three confirmed cases all three staff members resigned prior to determination of Code of Conduct proceedings. Despite this the agency is continuing the assessment of these cases in order to determine if criminal charges should proceed."
Mr Miller said the agency would continue to expand the software it used to detect unauthorised access of client records.
Medicare Australia, meanwhile, has confirmed 49 instances of staff inappropriately browsing confidential records after it launched a review program during the 2007 financial year.
The program included the introduction of a detection system that was modelled on data matching rules used by Centrelink, which has uncovered more than 790 instances of staff spying since 2004.
"Medicare Australia takes browsing very seriously and has a dedicated unit in place to proactively review staff access to Medicare Australia information," an agency spokeswoman said.
"Where unauthorised access is detected, swift and appropriate disciplinary and/or legal action is taken."
The spokeswoman said 147 investigations into possibly inappropriate access were launched during the first year of the program and in 63 cases the employees were cleared of wrongdoing.
"Forty-nine cases were finalised with a range of disciplinary action being taken, including information or formal counselling, written reprimands and fines. A number of operators resigned either before or after the completion of the investigation into their case," she said.
A further 35 cases are yet to be finalised.
The spying incidents came despite ongoing efforts by federal government agencies to beef up computer systems and education programs designed to detect and stamp out improper access to sensitive client records.
Mr Miller said 3500 agency employees had received fraud training since July last year and all staff were retrained at least every two years.
Medicare Australia staff are warned about the consequences of browsing client records whenever they log on and all staff access to records is monitored.
A spokesman for Centrelink said the agency had compiled data on unauthorised employee access to client records during the 2007 financial year and the information would be published in the agency's annual report.
If this were to be done in the private sector, then there would be consequences, but since the government runs the law, there are NO consequences. How typical, no suprises there.
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