An audit of the performance statements lodged by Commonwealth entities under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act) has found most Departments and Agencies falling short of requirements.
Auditor-General, Grant Hehir (pictured) said in his report, Implementation of the Annual Performance Statements Requirements 2016–17, that the Act was introduced to establish a “strong performance reporting system to demonstrate to the Parliament and the public that resources are being used effectively and efficiently”.
Mr Hehir said that while the audited entities met the requirement to publish performance statements, there was room for improvement in their quality.
“Observations made in this report indicate that there is still some way to go in the maturity of entities’ implementation of the annual performance statements’ requirements,” Mr Hehir said.
“Improvements to the quality of those elements, including the development of purposes that better define impact, and more appropriate performance measures, are still required.”
He said the Department of the Environment and Energy, the former Department of Employment, Austrade and the Australian Sports Commission were selected for the audit, the timing of which was intended to inform entities’ development of 2018–19 corporate plans and the publication of 2017–18 performance statements.
“The mixture of entities, reflected by two Departments of state, a non-corporate Commonwealth entity, and a corporate Commonwealth entity, was considered to provide the opportunity to make observations that would be relevant to a range of Commonwealth entities,” Mr Hehir said.
“Each of the entities had processes to support the coordination and collation of the performance statements … the scale and complexity of processes varied depending on the entity.”
He said his audit report made a number of recommendations to which the entities agreed.
The Auditor-General’s 96-page report can be accessed at this PS News link and the audit team was Jennifer Hutchinson, Alicia Vaughan, Kara Ball, Taela Edwards and Michael White.
