A reconciliation review to track the progress of work related to recommendations made by the Office of the Road Safety Camera Commissioner (ORSCC) has found a lack of responsiveness led to successive Commissioners making recommendations on the same issues.
The ORSCC said its report, Reconciliation of Recommendations of the Road Safety Camera Commissioner, examined 102 recommendations published between 2012 and January 2020, 64 of which remained outstanding or with unknown status after it excluded duplications and recommendations known to be closed.
The Office said 30 of those related to a report by the Road Safety Camera Commissioner into the WannaCry Virus in 2017 and the remaining 34 were general recommendations.
“At the commencement of this review it was established that only a small number of recommendations made by the Office had been completed prior to the end of 2019,” the ORSCC said.
“However, it was disappointing to find that while there had been adoption of the vast majority recommendations, there was limited, or slow progress into completing them,” it said.
“It was also clear that this had been the case for some time with some recommendations, particularly around issues of governance and oversight, modernisation of technology, the collection and use of data had not been addressed.”
The ORSCC said many of the unresolved recommendations were found to be with the Department of Justice and Community Safety (DJCS) which had gaps and vacancies in key management roles responsible for operation of the camera program during 2019 and 2020.
The Office said newly appointed executive managers within DJCS had consolidated progress towards recommendations and set a clear pathway forward for the delivery of recommendations.
“While there is considerable work still to be done, these actions have led to progress of several key recommendations made by successive Commissioners within the scope of this Review and in more recent contemporary Reports,” it said.
“A mechanism has now been developed to track Departments and Agencies progress against recommendations in a reasonable timeframe.”
The ORSCC said clearing the backlog of recommendations would take some time but would enable it to focus on strategic issues and whole of system issues which affected the proper operation of the road safety camera program.
It said that of the 34 general recommendations open at the start of its review, 18 had been closed and 16 remained open however, many were flagged for completion by December.
The ORSCC’s 12-page Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
