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BDM (Marriages)/MSD Married Persons Programme

• Annual Report
• Technical information
• System description
• Historical activity

Annual Report

Purpose: To identify current clients who have married, so that MSD can update client records and reassess eligibility for benefits and allowances.

Year commenced: 2005

Features: Data transferred weekly by online transfer.

BDM disclosure to MSD: BDM provides marriage information covering the week prior to the extract date. The marriage details include the full names of each spouse (including name at birth if different from current name), their birth dates and addresses, and registration and marriage dates.

2008/09 activity:

New match runs started in the reporting period

Match runs 52
Records received for matching                   23,378         
Possible matches identified 2,646
All match runs active in the reporting period
Matches that required no further action       1,572
Notices of adverse action 1,085
Challenges 2
Successful challenges 1
Overpayments established 498
Value of overpayments established $515,537      

Compliance: Compliant.

Technical information

Information matching provision Tax Administration Act 1994, s.85G
Year authorised 2004
Programme type Identifying unclaimed entitlement
Unique identifiers Tax File number
MSD client number
On-line transfers Yes

System description

Each week, newly recorded marriage information is extracted by DIA from the BDM marriages register portion of the Data Aggregation Layer (DAL). To retrieve the file, MSD accesses the DIA web server via the Government Logon Service (GLS) using an encrypted (HTTPS) connection. The information provided to MSD includes marriage registration date and marriage date along with first name, surname, date of birth and address for both spouses.

MSD compare the marriage information with its active client data. The data matching algorithm used produces positive matches that are weighted to indicate the probability that an MSD client is the person on the marriages register.

All positive matches are loaded into the NDMC computer system, AIMOS, for manual verification and processing before any steps to take action against an individual are contemplated. Such preliminary checks may reveal, for instance, that the beneficiary has already notified MSD of the marriage.

Historical activity

                                                 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08
New match runs started in the reporting period
Match runs 32 52 52
Records compared 17,739    23,775     23,776   
Client cases                                 2,180 2,604 2,620
All match runs active in the reporting period
Legitimate cases 1,437 1,619 1,562
Notices of adverse action 755 1,001 1,064
Overpayments established (number) 491 581 601
Overpayments established $445,859 $508,690 $633,275
Total challenges (cases) 4 3 3
Successful challenges 1 2 2