Page 1564 - Week 04 - Thursday, 25 March 2010
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Let us look at some of the key findings. Point No 8 is an interesting one: “corporate overhead cost allocation to business enterprises is not transparent”. That is on page 4. I note that this document is not available anywhere online. The government did not want anyone to actually see this. This transparent government that likes to disseminate information when it is good does not like to disseminate information when it is not so good. At page 5, the next page, the report says:
In over view, TAMS must continue its integration journey and now strengthen its financial management and organisational performance frameworks so it can demonstrate to its stakeholders that it fully understands the financial and service delivery implications of its business activities.
You only write that if it is not happening. It continues:
This will enable TAMS to demonstrate to government where and when additional resources are required and the implications when these resources are not provided.
Most tellingly, it goes on:
In a competitive environment for resources, governments will remain reluctant to provide additional funding to TAMS for its service delivery, unless it has confidence that this money will be expended transparently, consistently with its priorities and achieve value for money.
Why do you write something like that if it is not happening at the moment? Of course it is not happening. TAMS have major problems, as do many other government agencies. On page 15:
A number of recommendations are made to improve the current state financial management of TAMS and move towards a more transparent and robust operational footing for future years.
In particular, one of the future goals is:
Greater transparency, and understanding from an organisational wide perspective, of financial performance, accountability for performance and accurate costing of service delivery.
That should be done immediately. That was a recommendation that TAMS have to get onto this quickly. I wonder whether they have. I am very doubtful. Here is another one:
TAMS should also review its administrative practices … This will assist with the transparency of the cost of managing TAMS and corporate service provision and ensure the right accountabilities for managing these costs.
At page 47, the footnote states:
This explains in part the increase from the cost estimate and is an example of where the financial management practices could be improved to give greater transparency of actual costs.
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