Page 4281 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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might be a discussion, if you like, amongst the various agencies to see how the budget papers could be set out in a more user friendly form.
One of the other recommendations of the committee that related to the provision of information was that a select committee be established, comprising the same membership as that of the Estimates Committee, to examine matters related to future estimates committees, including the form the revised budget papers may take.
The approach that we adopted on this issue was that the members of the existing committee - the one that disbanded when the report was provided to you, Mr Speaker, on 5 November - had some experience in the process, and it was appropriate for them to discuss the issues in a more informal manner with the members of the various agencies with a view to coming up with a process by which the information could be provided to the Estimates Committee in sufficient time to enable the members to consider it and thus, possibly hopefully, reduce the amount of time spent in those hearings. That is important from the point of view of the costs of running the committee, because there are costs associated with that.
The committee was also concerned about some of the programs that relate to program budgeting. In fact, one particular program, program 15, community services, covered a number of subprograms which were quite diverse. The committee seemed to consider, as did the people who appeared before us, that there were some problems in coming to grips, if you like, with the performance indicators, which are an important part of program budgeting, for that particular subprogram because of its diversity, which ranged from disability services through community welfare to sport and recreation.
There seemed to be a suggestion that that situation needed some looking at. We were led to believe that the Office of Public Sector Management was encouraging agencies to complete the corporate planning process and that it may wish to assist the various agencies to review the program and subprogram structure within that area. In fact, it was quite clear, from our point of view, that the community services people were quite ready and willing to get on with that job, and that was why the specific recommendation for the justice and community services department was made by the committee.
During my time in the chair and during my questioning, I tended to concentrate on the aspects related to program budgeting and performance indicators. Once again, there were times when it seemed there were some problems in coming to grips with the effect and the process of program budgeting. That is not an unusual problem, because the ACT has only recently gone to program budgeting and I think there needs to be a little more work on that. Therefore, because of the time factor, the committee recommended, once
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