Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4442 ..

Mrs Carnell: It is interesting, is it not?

MR OSBORNE: It is interesting, yes. My question, Chief Minister, is this: Who or what is the Value Creation Group; where is it based; how much did this survey cost; why was it conducted; have there been any other similar surveys; and why is the information in it considered confidential? What commercial interests are at stake here, other than your own?

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am disappointed that Mr Osborne has not been aware of this whole approach. This has actually been going on for a while and was part of the work done on the customer focus approach for the ACT Government, as we have actually announced. It is in the annual reports, everywhere, that the Chief Minister's Department and all other departments were required, under our new customer focus approach for all of our Public Service departments, to do some focus group work and to do some work generally to assess what the consumers, our customers, the people that we are dealing with, are actually thinking; what they believe is important; and the sorts of attitudes or how they react to the services that government departments are actually providing.

The spin-off from that work has been customer commitment statements or strategies in every department, as has been required, as Mr Osborne would know, because it is all in the annual reports of all of our departments. They are not just statements that we have to care about our customers; it goes lots further than that. Every department is required to put in place an action plan on how they plan to address the issues, some of which were raised in these sorts of survey-focus groups. I will have to take on notice exactly how the company that did at least some of that work was decided upon - normally, these things are done by tender - and how much it cost. What our customer commitment focus approach was costing was all in the budget, but I am very happy to get those figures for Mr Osborne.

MR OSBORNE: The main part of the question, Mrs Carnell, was why it was considered confidential and what commercial interest is at stake here. I would like to hear your answer to that. The document that I tabled was missing pages 8 to 14. Will you table those missing pages?

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I have absolutely no problem in tabling those pages. I am actually very happy for members of the Assembly to see the documents. I did not stamp them confidential; but from memory - and this is a few months ago now, so I am really having to remember - if you look at that document, Mr Osborne, some of the responses to the services provided by some of our agencies were less than wonderful. The result of that was, of course, the need to improve. I think you will find that people believe the service they were getting from some areas - and I do remember a few of them - was not up to scratch. I have to say I do not believe it is fair to the public servants involved to have that sort of information on the front page of the Canberra Times, but I do believe that sort of information must be addressed.

That is what we did, via our customer commitment programs, via the action plans, via the approach we are taking that if perceptions by the community are that the standard of service that they get from any government department is below expectations - some of it is below 50 per cent, I have to say - that is not all right and we simply have to address it.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .