An audit assurance review into whether Agencies accepted and implemented recommendations made by the Auditor-General in the three years to 2021 has found they completed 66 per cent of them.
In his report Responses to Performance Engagement Recommendations: Annual Status Update, Victoria’s Auditor-General Andrew Greaves said his review focused on all 1,316 recommendations made by his Office between July 2018 and December 2021, of which 1,296 were accepted.
The issue was in timing, not acceptance.
“For all Agencies across the examined period, it is taking up to 43 months (5.2 years) to fully implement all recommendations, with a median of 11 months,” Mr Greaves said.
“We see a positive trend in overall timeliness because the range of months to complete a recommendation continues to decrease,” he said.
“However, 132 of 442 unresolved recommendations (30 per cent) are more than three years old.”
Mr Greaves said the largest proportion of unresolved recommendations (45 per cent) were one to two years old, while the second largest proportion were three to four years old.
He said Agencies should pay close attention to resolving those three to four-year-old recommendations to mitigate the risks his Office found in their respective engagements.
“Based on target dates provided by Agencies in this review, we expect to see marked progress for completing these recommendations in next year’s review,” the Auditor-General said.
Mr Greaves said his review compared the completion rate of two distinct Agency types, Government Departments and other Government Entities with the Departments completing 435 of their 689 accepted recommendations (63 per cent)
“Of the 84 other Government entities included in this review, which includes authorities, Government bodies and councils, 11 reported completing all their recommendations,” he said.
“With the Department of Transport achieving the highest completion rate … it completed 58 of its 78 recommendations (74 per cent),” he said.
“In addition, we found that the Department of Justice and Community Safety (DJCS) had a below-average completion rate.”
Mr Greaves said DJCS reported that it completed 33 of its 51 recommendations (65 per cent) however, eight of its 18 unresolved recommendations were three to four years old.
The Auditor-General’s 307-page Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
