Page 589 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 March 2014
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The annual report directions note that annual reports, as key accountability documents, are one of the main ways for agencies to account for their performance, through ministers, to the Assembly and the wider community, a key part of the historical record of government and public administration decisions, actions and outcomes, a source of information and reference about the performance of agencies and service providers, and a key reference document for internal management.
In reporting, the committee considered the issues raised in the annual reports with regard to accountability, governance and effective reporting by public sector agencies. The committee’s report includes discussions of significant issues raised during the discussion process and makes 16 recommendations. I will just go to a couple of the recommendations.
Recommendation 3 is:
The Committee recommends that all Directors‐General, and equivalents, ensure that all exemption requests for single select procurements include consideration of ‘best value for money’ as per the Government Procurement Policy Circular.
There were a number of questions asked as to why the government went to single select, for instance, on the issues of procurement when clearly there were other people that were quite capable of providing that service, that policy or whatever it was that was requested. The use of single select really needs to have a very strong reason for its use so that we have got a clear and open process.
Recommendations 4 and 5 look at the public interest disclosure process, and a number of agencies did not comply with the requirement of the act as to what should be outlined in the annual report. I refer ministers and directors-general to the annual report directions and their requirement to actually have more information than just, “We had one or two or zero public interest disclosures.” Where there have been public interest disclosures, there needs to be detail, including what has happened to address that. It is quite important that that happen.
There are other recommendations then on the Legislative Assembly and the review of members’ entitlements, the uploading of travel reports. The National Arboretum Scientific Research Committee should look at, in the first instance, native species.
Then we get to recommendation 11, which is about the Convention Centre:
The Committee notes the broad support for a new convention centre from the Canberra business community, and recommends that the ACT Government continue to take measures to realise this project.
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