Page 4710 - Week 15 - Thursday, 16 December 1993
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The second report that we deal with is audit report No. 4 of 1992, which in fact deals with the management of information technology within the Board of Health. Interestingly enough, that organisation, which seems to be beset by all kinds of problems, has demonstrated a very good understanding of the concepts of IT management against the general run across the breadth of the ACT Government Service and has demonstrated some very good achievements. I believe that they should be commended for improving their use and management of information technology, given all of the troubles that they are otherwise coping with.
The third report is report No. 1 of 1993, which had to do with the management of capital works. There is just one comment that I would like to make in connection with that. It has to do with this question of life cycle costing and doing proper cost-benefit analyses of projects that are put up for inclusion in the capital works program. At paragraphs 4.21 to 4.24 we note everybody's good intent, the recommendations of the Estimates Committee, the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Infrastructure - recommendations which have in fact been agreed by the Government, yet in this year's capital works program this essential costing information was generally missing. We have noted that, and we would seek to see some improvement in future years.
The next report is the Auditor-General's report No. 2 of 1993, a report on his investigation into the asbestos removal program. The committee was satisfied that, despite what some people might regard as a cost overrun on that project, the management was as good as it could have been under the circumstances. The Auditor-General has made no particular criticism, and we generally support the comments that he has made in that matter. It was a project driven by concerns more for people's health than for costs. In the event it may have been possible to have come out with a less costly exercise, but it was a one-off project and I do not know how you determine whether it could have been done better or not. The Auditor-General seemed satisfied, and so are we.
The next report is Auditor-General's report No. 4 of 1993, and that dealt with a number of matters. It dealt with the management of home loans; it dealt with capital equipment purchases; and it dealt with the human resource management system. There were just a couple of minor comments, particularly in connection with the capital equipment purchase program, that I want to comment on at this time. We make a comment at paragraph 6.31 in connection with the Department of Urban Services. We note that the submission from the Minister in this matter did not address the comments regarding 1992-93 general major plant and equipment purchases in any great depth, and we note that we will be maintaining an interest in future audit reports relating to these issues in the department and we may come back to the issues raised in this report if future reports do not show a greater awareness of the matters raised by the Auditor-General.
The second matter was in connection with the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning. We refer to that at paragraph 6.40. It has to do with a difference of opinion between the Treasury on the one hand and the agency on the other as to what is major plant and equipment. It seems to me, after all these years of purchasing major equipment, that the agencies and the Treasury should
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