Refine search Expand filter

Reports

Published

Actions for Volume Ten 2010 focus on Education and Communities

Volume Ten 2010 focus on Education and Communities

Education
Community Services
Asset valuation
Compliance
Financial reporting
Internal controls and governance
Management and administration
Procurement
Project management
Workforce and capability

The report includes a review on the Building the Education Revolution and outcomes of his financial audits on NSW Government agencies for Education and Communities 2009-10. Whilst the Department of Education appears to have achieved its key objective of rapidly constructing school facilities, costs were higher than business as usual and the preferences of local communities were not always met.

Published

Actions for Volume Nine 2010 focus on Transport, Planning and Industry

Volume Nine 2010 focus on Transport, Planning and Industry

Transport
Planning
Industry
Asset valuation
Compliance
Internal controls and governance
Management and administration
Procurement
Project management
Regulation
Risk
Workforce and capability

The report includes comments on his financial audits of NSW Government transport, planning and industry agencies for 2009-10. A key recommendation from the report is that the New South Wales Government identify lessons learnt from the metro experience and ensure that future decision processes are developed to ensure the State never again expends such a large amount of scarce transport funding dollars and valuable time on a project that does not proceed.

Published

Actions for Volume Seven 2010 focus on Environment, Climate Change and Water

Volume Seven 2010 focus on Environment, Climate Change and Water

Planning
Industry
Environment
Compliance
Information technology
Management and administration
Project management
Regulation
Workforce and capability

The report includes comments on his financial audits of NSW Government environment, climate change and water agencies. The audits of these agencies’ financial reports for the year ended 30 June 2010 resulted in one qualified Independent Auditor’s Report. Sydney Water has not recognised assets and liabilities of the Build-Own-Operate schemes in their statement of financial position. The combined profit after tax of the four largest water utilities increas

Published

Actions for Volume Five 2010 focus on Public Financing Enterprises

Volume Five 2010 focus on Public Financing Enterprises

Industry
Transport
Finance
Treasury
Planning
Financial reporting
Information technology
Internal controls and governance
Management and administration
Regulation
Risk
Workforce and capability

The report includes comments on NSW Treasury and agencies in the finance and superannuation sectors. The New South Wales public sector superannuation funds’ investments were $42.2 billion at 30 June 2010, up from $38.5 billion in 2009. Investment returns reached 14.5 per cent in 2009-10. This is a significant improvement on the investment returns of up to negative 18.4 per cent at the peak of the global financial crisis in 2008.  

Published

Actions for Volume Four 2010 focus on Electricity

Volume Four 2010 focus on Electricity

Planning
Industry
Financial reporting
Information technology
Project management

The report includes comments on financial audits of government agencies in the electricity sector. The audits of the seven NSW electricity corporations’ financial reports for the year ended 30 June 2010 each resulted in an unqualified Independent Auditor’s Report. We did note significant uncertainty that may affect the value of power station assets due to the unknown impacts of any future carbon pollution reduction scheme and the Government’s proposed el

Published

Actions for Protecting the Environment: Pollution Incidents

Protecting the Environment: Pollution Incidents

Planning
Environment
Compliance
Management and administration
Regulation
Risk

The department has a systematic approach to receiving, investigating and responding to reports of pollution incidents. However, the department does not analyse and report on the extent of environmental harm caused by pollution incidents reported to it, whether its response has minimised harm to the environment, whether its regulatory approach has improved compliance, particularly by Environment Protection Licence (EPL) holders (licensees).   Parli

Published

Actions for Knowing the Collections

Knowing the Collections

Planning
Environment
Asset valuation
Internal controls and governance
Management and administration

The Museum is doing much to improve access to its collections. However, as with other natural history museums, only a small proportion is on public display. Its efforts range from placing information on the internet for use by the public and scientific users, to helping indigenous Australian and Pacific Islander communities reconnect with their respective cultures.   Parliamentary reference - Report number #203 - released 1 September 2010

Published

Actions for Volume One 2010

Volume One 2010

Planning
Finance
Health
Justice
Environment
Financial reporting
Internal controls and governance
Management and administration

The report includes comments on his annual audit of entitlements paid to Members of NSW Parliament and financial audits of WorkCover, Justice Health, Waste Recycling Processing Corporation and some other NSW Government agencies.   In his audit the Auditor-General had called for a system to be developed to ensure accrued loyalty/reward benefits are used to reduce Members’ parliamentary business travel expenditure, rather than be forfeited when a Memb

Published

Actions for School Annual Reports

School Annual Reports

Education
Management and administration

We believe that school reports are an excellent concept. However, in their present form they are not an effective means of holding a school accountable. Successive performance audits by our Office have identified significant shortcomings in the reports. This is not so much the fault of the schools. The reporting content is largely optional. There is limited opportunity to compare performance. And the highly restrictive reporting protocols lead to reports

Published

Actions for Managing Grants

Managing Grants

Community Services
Industry
Planning
Management and administration
Service delivery

In our view, the agencies we studied cannot be sure that the grants they allocate align with their corporate objectives, and that program outcomes are achieved. This is mainly due to problems with grant selection and the evaluation of results. It was good to see that most of the grants programs had funding objectives which were fairly clear. But we found problems across most programs which could affect the fair and equitable selection of grants, such as,