The Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford released a report today highlighting the impact of the growing student population on school infrastructure and the increasing cost of psychological injury workers' compensation claims in Education. The report also gives updates on an initiative designed to create new out of school hours care (OSHC) places and on the expected final cost and completion date for the Learning Management and Business Reform (LMBR) program.

Financial reporting within the Transport Cluster continues to improve with reported misstatements down 96 per cent since 2011-12 to just three in 2015-16, according to a report released today by the NSW Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford.

Transport for NSW did not effectively plan and procure the CBD and South East Light Rail (CSELR) project to achieve best value for money according to a report released today by NSW Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford.

Transport for NSW is on track to deliver the project, but it will come at a higher cost with lower benefits than in the approved business case.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #278 - released 30 November 2016

Overcrowding in the NSW prison system continues to worsen along with the backlog of cases in the District Court, according to a report released by the New South Wales Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford on the annual financial statements audits in the Justice cluster.

The Family and Community Services report was released today by the Acting Deputy Auditor-General. Financial reporting within the cluster continues to improve but there are opportunities to improve governance and performance reporting.

In a report released today, the NSW Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford provides a snapshot of reported fraud in the NSW public sector and an analysis of NSW Government agencies’ fraud controls based on a survey of 102 agencies.

The NSW Government’s ‘program evaluation initiative’, introduced to assess whether service delivery programs achieve expected outcomes and value for money, is largely ineffective according to a report released today by NSW Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford.

Government services, in areas such as public order and safety, health and education, are delivered by agencies through a variety of programs. In 2016–17, the NSW Government estimates that it will spend over $73 billion on programs to deliver services.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #277 - released 3 November 2016

New South Wales has a lower rate of foodborne illness than the national average. This reflects some good practices in the NSW Food Authority’s approach to monitoring food safety standards. It also is a factor of the long-standing commitment by local councils’ to ensuring retail food businesses meet these standards.

To ensure foodborne illness remains low, the Authority needs to better monitor its arrangements with councils which inspect retail food businesses on its behalf, and receive additional and more timely information from councils on compliance with food safety standards.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #274 - released 15 September 2016

We issued unqualified audit opinions on the above agencies’ 30 June 2013 financial statements. During the year, The Treasury issued TC 13/01 ‘Mandatory early close procedures for 2013’. As a result, the law and order services agencies were required to perform early close procedures. All law and order service agencies were broadly successful in performing the procedures, which helped them submit financial statements by an earlier due date. This in turn enabled the financial statement audits to be finalised within an earlier timeframe of eight weeks (nine weeks in 2011-12).

As previously recommended, the Department of Attorney General and Justice should continue integrating policies, operations and systems between its divisions and, once complete, analyse the costs and benefits. The Department of Attorney-General and Justice should also ensure it has the necessary processes in place to enable it to regularly monitor and measure the performance and success of the Victims Support Scheme in providing a more accessible, streamlined and targeted service to victims of violent crime in New South Wales.

There are 55,000 eligible applicants on the social housing waiting list, with some people waiting for more than ten years to get a house. The waiting list could be more than 86,000 by 2016 unless things change.
 
Social housing only meets about 44 per cent of need in New South Wales even though we have the largest social housing portfolio in Australia. Social housing falls into three groups. About 80 per cent is public housing which is owned and operated by government. The remaining stock is community housing and Aboriginal housing.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #234 - released 30 July 2013