Victoria’s Auditor-General has issued a report on the money spent by Departments delivering goods to the community, finding that in most cases, they did not meet the responsibilities to measure and report on their performance as required by the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF)
In his Report Measuring and Reporting on Service Delivery, Auditor-General Andrew Greaves said the Government spent public money to deliver goods and services to the Victorian community and “Parliament and the community require accurate and fair reporting of the performance of those services”.
The Auditor-General said the Report examined nine Victorian Government Departments’ performance statements in DTF’s Budget Paper No. 3: Service Delivery (BP3) and whether they complied with DTF’s Resource Management Framework (RMF).
He said the Report concluded Service delivery performance was not clearly visible to Parliament and the community.
“Departments do not fully follow the requirements of the RMF, and BP3 includes too much information that is not relevant to output budgeting,” Mr Greaves said.
“This extra information detracts from the primary purpose of BP3 and makes it harder to discern how well departments are delivering services,” he said.
“Nothing came to our attention to indicate that Departments’ performance information is not accurate and reliable.”
Following the conclusion of the Report, the Auditor-General recommended Departments need somewhere other than BP3 to report performance information about inputs and processes.
He said when Departments make changes, DTF should advise them to follow the RMF guidance.
The Auditor-General’s 59-page Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
