Governing the City State - Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate ...

Finance and Deregulation and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That body “meets threetimes a year to discuss the domestic and global outlook. A JEFG Report is prepared byTreasury in consultation with the other partners and is provided to the Treasurer, the PrimeMinister and the committee members. The report provides Treasury's assessment of thedomestic and global outlook, including its revised economic forecasts”. 190Particular focus should also be placed on building the Finance Directorate’s capability toproactively support innovation and continuous improvement across the ACTPS.Shared ServicesShared Services was established in the 2006-07 Budget to provide Information andCommunication Technology (ICT), Procurement, Publishing and Records Managementservices, as well as tactical and transactional Human Resource and Finance services to theACTPS. The intention was to consolidate back office functions to achieve economies ofscale, standardised and streamlined processes and an overall reduction in costs.The location of Shared Services in TAMS has permitted the cross-fertilisation of ways ofworking, processes and service focus that underpinned the decision to locate it there in 2008.The Review has concluded, however, that while the inward facing role of Shared Servicesproviding services to the ACTPS has benefited from exposure to the outward facing publicservice delivery elements of TAMS, it is now time to relocate Shared Services at the centre ofgovernment. Given the focus on efficiency and streamlining of support functions isinextricably linked to the Government’s broader fiscal strategy, the Review recommends it beattached to the Finance Directorate.Throughout the Review, there was general support for the Shared Services model, and for itsrelocation to the centre of the ACTPS. While the establishment of Shared Services has begunthe process of removing duplications and enhancing efficiencies, there was also consensusthat more could be done to embed and enhance the reforms commenced in 2006. Aconsistent view was expressed that while transactional finance and personnel functions werebeing delivered satisfactorily, there was scope for improvement in relation to procurement,information technology, and provision of the next layer of people and performance services.A commonly expressed view in consultations, which the Review endorses, is that there is anurgent need to modernise and combine legacy information systems to facilitate more efficienttransactional processes and better strategic workforce management and planning. There wasalso a clearly held view supporting significant simplification in employment and industrialframeworks. Such changes should be made ahead of the development of new systems toavoid further embedding and entrenching existing frameworks and business processes insystem workflows. Further discussion of this particular issue is set out in Chapter 6.190 See for example http://www.treasury.gov.au/contentitem.asp?NavId=035&ContentID=1884Administrative Arrangements Changes: 133