An audit of a grants program to deliver regional jobs and growth into regional areas has found that while advice from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development was largely appropriate, the consequent assessment processes were substandard.
In his report Award of funding under the Regional Jobs and Investment Packages, Auditor-General, Grant Hehir assessed whether funding under the Regional Jobs and Investment Packages (RJIP) program was informed by appropriate Departmental advice.
“Advice provided by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development was largely appropriate, however the assessment processes were not to the standard required by the grants administration framework,” Mr Hehir said.
He found that applications for the program were not assessed in accordance with the program guidelines.
“The eligibility requirements were not applied in full and there are indications of shortcomings in the assessment of the merit criterion most directly related to the program outcomes,” Mr Hehir said.
“Requests for co-funding exemptions were not appropriately considered and conflict of interest management was not to a consistently appropriate standard.”
Mr Hehir said it was not clear that the documented assessment procedures were sufficiently well developed, and there was insufficient evidence that each of the more than 60 individuals that undertook the assessments received adequate training.
He found that decisions taken on the award of grant funding were however supported by clear advice and were consistent with the requirements of the grants administration framework.
“The briefings included clear funding recommendations that were based on the results of the assessment of applications undertaken,” he said.
“The briefing approach promoted accountability by identifying to decision-makers the requirement for them to record the reasons for awarding funding to applications that had not been recommended.
Mr Hehir found that in total, 233 projects were awarded $220.5 million in grant funding across the program’s 10 regions.
The Auditor-General’s online report can be accessed at this PS News link and his 56-page printed report can be accessed at this PS News link.
The audit team was Chirag Pathak, Tiffany Tang and Brian Boyd.
