An audit of the lengths to which four Agencies in the Australian Public Service have adopted reforms they agreed to after examinations by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and a range of Parliamentary Committees, has discovered that all four had failed to follow through.
In his report, Implementation of ANAO and Parliamentary Committee Recommendations, Auditor-General, Grant Hehir examined the responses of the Department of Agriculture, Airservices Australia, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development, to the recommendations.
“Australian Government entities are subject to external scrutiny from the ANAO, the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit (JCPAA), and other Parliamentary committees,” Mr Hehir said.
“None of the selected entities demonstrated that they had effectively implemented all agreed recommendations.”
With respect to recommendations made by the ANAO, the Auditor found that the Department of Infrastructure Transport, Cities and Regional Development had adopted a formal governance process for monitoring ANAO’s performance audit recommendations but it was not consistently applied.
It found that that neither Airservices Australia, nor APVMA, had established formal governance arrangements and that while the Department of Agriculture had advised that the recommendations of a performance audit had been implemented, the ANAO was unable to find evidence that they hadn’t.
With respect to recommendations made by the JCPAA and other Parliamentary Committees the audit found that each of the entities had processes in place to respond to the recommendations: “However, none of the four entities has formalised governance arrangements in place to monitor the implementation of agreed JCPAA and other parliamentary committee recommendations”.
The Auditor-General made four recommendations following his audit, three of which were agreed, or partially agreed, by all the Agencies.
A recommendation that Airservices Australia seek help from the International Centre for Complex Project Management on the OneSKY Australia Program was not agreed to by the Agency.
The Auditor-General’s full online report can be accessed at this PS News link and his 88-page document tabled in Parliament can be accessed at this link.
The audit team was Jacqueline Hedditch, Jillian Blow, Kate Wilson, Hayley Ferreira and Michael White.