An audit of five Departments’ management of the grants they allocate has also assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the internal controls in use.
According to the audit, it found that clearer information was needed, partly for transparency reasons, but also because people could understand what funding was going to their local communities.
It said more could be done to make grant information user-friendly and accessible, with an interactive dashboard.
“With the dashboard comes the opportunity to learn what is important to the public, so Departments can focus on making that data complete and accurate,” the audit said.
“This will allow the information to be published more regularly in future, making it more timely and useful.”
The audit found the Departments in charge of the eight grant programs had demonstrated at least basic competency in managing them.
“Some have improved their processes over time to reflect better practice. In these instances Departments have achieved improved efficiency by automating processes,” it said.
“We found that older grant programs (which have had longer to improve their internal controls) tend to have more efficient and effective systems and processes than those of more recent duration.”
The audit said that Departments needed to improve how they identified and managed the risks associated with specific grants.
They must be able to demonstrate that their design of grant programs takes the risks into account.
“Some Departments have collaborated on projects to share knowledge on grants management and build capability across the Government. It is a good start,” it said.
The audit made eight recommendations to support its findings which can be found, along with the Auditor-General’s full 42-page report, at this PS News link.
