Page 78 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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Canberra Connect is a central point of contact between the government and the community, and avenues for contact include the shopfronts, a telephone contact centre, and an online presence. The Auditor-General found that TAMS had sound frameworks in place, including a good information management system that had the potential to expand to deal with feedback and complaints at a whole-of-government level. The Auditor-General found there was room for improvement in a few areas, including the availability of policies, procedures and guidelines to staff and the community, ensuring that approaches to handling feedback were consistent across the service regardless of who received the complaint and how feedback was monitored and analysed over the longer term.
Overall the Auditor-General’s inquiry indicated that there was capacity for the government to further utilise the information provided via feedback and complaints mechanisms to improve business practices and service delivery. The public accounts committee made four recommendations in its review of the Auditor-General’s report. I note that Mr Corbell, who was the minister responsible at that time, tabled a response to one of those points on 25 October last year, and this was a progress report on implementation within TAMS. The full response I tabled today agrees with each of the other recommendations of the committee.
The government has agreed that a whole-of-government policy on the management of feedback and complaints is to be developed. Indeed, the head of service tells me that one has been drafted and after a period of consultation will be finalised shortly. The policy augments existing systems with high level principles pulled from the Ombudsman’s better practice guide as a way to provide a stronger foundation from which procedures can be advanced.
The government has also provided a full response to the ACT Ombudsman’s 10-point plan to improve ACT government service delivery as requested, and the response supports or notes all of the Ombudsman’s recommendations.
Additionally, with regard to whole-of-government approaches to complaint handling at the practical level, I am happy to report that the strategic board recently looked at the possibility of consolidating the whole-of-government feedback process, and it was agreed that a one-service approach was needed.
To this end, Canberra Connect has established a triage system to receive, prioritise and direct complaints on behalf of the service. It is still in implementation phase, but I am told that at this early stage we have had a positive response and procedures appear to be working well.
Apart from the procedural issues though, the government recognises the broader cultural issues that were alluded to by the Auditor-General and the Ombudsman. To be agile and well placed at handling emerging issues, the public service must be attuned to feedback, recognising it as an opportunity for improvement rather than becoming defensive. While there are pockets in the service that demonstrate best practice with regard to complaint handling and other pockets have well-developed and
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