A performance audit of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s (ATSB) investigation of transport accidents and safety occurrences has found it be inefficient.
In his report Efficiency of the Investigation of Transport Accidents and Safety Occurrences , Auditor-General, Grant Hehir said the object of his audit was to examine the efficiency of ATSB’s investigation work and to compare it to its past performances as well as those of its international equivalents.
“The efficiency with which the ATSB investigates transport accidents and safety occurrences has been declining,” Mr Hehir said.
He said that among other things, the audit had studied whether the ATSB had put in place efficient processes for the investigation of transport accidents and safety occurrences.
The audit found the ATSB had recently been focusing its attention on reducing the backlog of old investigations, improving investigation timeframes and taking steps to benchmark its performance against transport investigation entities in some other countries.
Nevertheless he found there was still work to do.
“The efficiency of the ATSB’s investigation activities has declined over time both in relation to the length of time taken to complete investigations, and the amount of investigation resources required,” Mr Hehir said.
He said analysis of the available data indicated that, averaged across the last three years, ATSB had performed well in comparison to selected countries on a range of efficiency metrics.
However, on an annualised trend basis, the analysis indicated ATSB’s efficiency was declining relative to the selected comparators, particularly in relation to resource efficiency.
The audit made four recommendations, all of which were agreed by the ATSB.
The Auditor-General’s 46-page report can be accessed at this PS News link and the audit team was Michelle Mant, Amanda Ronald, Alexander Wilkinson and Brian Boyd.
