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

Much of this coordination work in whole of government reporting currently falls to theCMD, and would remain in the proposed Chief Minister’s. ACTPS colleagues rightlycomplain when overlapping requests are made in a seemingly uncoordinated fashionrequiring nearly the same information to be provided through different channels, but this is areflection of the need to align the reporting streams and standardize data sets, and not a lackof desire or effort to streamline processes from the centre.There are, for example, more than 40 action plans and strategies in existence that might beconceptually grouped under the Social Plan that have, through a series of incrementaldecisions each of which is reasonable in isolation, been added over time but are not requiredby that plan. Each of these plans has further layers of performance indicators and reportingrequirements. In the case of the Young People’s Plan, for example, there are 167 actionsagainst which reporting is required. Furthermore, often these lower level action plans,instead of describing how strategic goals and Government priorities will be pursued andprogress reported and evaluated, expand to fill the available space, locking in programs andways of working.The enormous (and often self imposed) reporting load placed on the ACTPS was raisedrepeatedly in consultations with senior officials, and with staff in round tables. While no onewould argue that proper reporting is not central to robust accountability processes, there is aview – rightly – that the current level of reporting activity is a material distraction fromdelivery of services, and absorbs very significant levels of resourcing that might be betterdirected elsewhere.Indeed, before it reports on a single ACT specific performance measure, the ACTPS isrequired to report on its performance to the Commonwealth Government on literally severalhundred indicators required by the Productivity Commission for the Report on GovernmentServices, and the National Agreements, National Partnerships and other intergovernmentalagreements settled by COAG or directly among affected jurisdictions. In many cases,performance against these indicators are tied to assessment of performance by the COAGReform Council and linked to significant levels of reward funding.The Review recommends that the ACT Government continue work underway to recalibratethe ACT’s strategic planning framework along the lines of the Scottish National PerformanceFramework. There are too many indicators, and those there are might be expressed in clearerand more measurable language. This should be supported by effort across the ACTPS toalign mechanisms for collecting and collating performance information more efficiently. Inthis process, the indicators required under national frameworks should be taken as a givenand ACT specific measures (if indeed it is appropriate for them to exist at all) developedmaking use of existing data sets, or able to be collected at the same time as nationalindicators, wherever possible.The ACTPS is not big enough to manage sustainably a reporting burden of the sort itcurrently bears, nor would it necessarily be an efficient or effective use of resources even ifthe capacity existed. There is an enormous reputational and service delivery risk inStrategy, Resource Allocation and the Vacant Middle Ground: 220