A performance audit into the effectiveness of Home Affairs’ management of family-related visas has found the Department’s arrangements for the design and delivery of its Family Migration Program were largely effective.
In his report Management of Migration to Australia — Family Migration Program, Auditor-General, Grant Hehir said planning for the delivery of the Program provided a suitable basis for meeting Government objectives.
“There are shortcomings in implementation which impact on the Department’s effectiveness and efficiency in delivering visa services,” Mr Hehir said.
“Aspects of policy and governance require further development and documenting to ensure performance in visa processing operations is appropriately monitored and evaluated,” he said.
“Home Affairs provides largely effective policy advice to the Government to support the design of the annual Family Migration Program, but consultation processes do not directly engage those affected by proposals.”
Mr Hehir said the Department’s business and risk planning largely supported delivery of the Program to meet Government objectives.
He said while Home Affairs’ arrangements to enable the delivery of the Family Migration Program were appropriate, its implementation of them required strengthening to ensure the consistent and timely provision of family visa services.
“The Department lacks clear frameworks for measuring efficiency for the purposes of improving business outcomes and systematically managing aged applications,” the Auditor-General said.
Mr Hehir made six recommendations to Home Affairs to: Establish processes for capturing meaningful client feedback; Ensure its prioritisation and risk-tiering processes were fit for purpose and consistently applied; Develop a policy and governance framework for its case allocation model; Establish a standard set of monitoring and evaluation metrics; Establish processes to identify, analyse and remediate potential processing inactivity; and Establish systematic processes for detecting and remediating aged cases across all parts of the Program.
The Auditor-General’s report can be accessed at this PS News link and a 91-page pdf version at this link.
The audit team was Judy Lachele, Glen Ewers, Edwin Apoderado, Rebecca Helgeby, Jessica Kanikula, Dr Cristiana Linthwaite-Gibbins, Michael Dean, Stuart Atchison, Song Khor, Tex Turner, Zhiying Wen and Alex Wilkinson.
