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

attempting to do a large number of things, in comparison to a tighter and more defined list ofgoals and delivering against them at the highest standards.The Review notes work is already well advanced in this regard, including through theMeasuring Our Progress website. Related projects include refinement of reporting toCabinet on achievement of Government priorities, the Performance and AccountabilityFramework, and the review of strategic indicators used in the Budget Papers. The Reviewrecommends the Government take the next logical, but potentially transformational step ofadopting at the next review of the Canberra Plan a simpler framework, with clear lines ofsight from purpose to delivery and back, similar to the National Performance Framework atAppendix 1.Layers of ReportingThe ACTPS is subject to cascading layers of reporting:• at the National Level;• to the ACT Government at three levels:o on Societal Outcomes through Measuring Our Progress;o on achievement of strategic intent and implementing Government strategy throughAnnual Reporting on the Canberra plan (which will be aligned with reporting on theAnnual Statement of Intent under the proposed Performance and AccountabilityFramework); ando on organisational performance – through Annual Reports (including performanceagainst agency strategic indicators and operational performance);• to the Cabinet on performance, including biannually on Government Priorities, annuallyon election commitments, and regularly on the Parliamentary Agreement; and• at the portfolio specific level in relation to strategies and action plans (includingexternally in some cases).While the Government has little control over the National level of reporting, it does controlthe remaining three. It is in the latter category that there is the most pressing need torationalise the volume of reporting (and indeed of strategies and plans). Greater alignment ofeffort in relation to reporting to the Cabinet and in relation to strategic intent will help tofocus effort in delivery and in reporting on what matters.To criticise this level of detail is not to denigrate the importance of service delivery in theseareas or these plans themselves. The point is that these documents often lead a stand-aloneexistence, with separate data collection, and without meaningful connection to evaluation anddecision making in the annual Budget cycle. Often, performance indicators measure what iseasy to count rather than striving for criteria that actually measure progress towards desiredoutcomes.In any reform of the reporting mechanisms used by the ACTPS, it is highly desirable thatreports indicate how performance relates to broader operations and the context. For example,in reporting against Government priorities, it should be clear which Directorate strategicStrategy, Resource Allocation and the Vacant Middle Ground: 221