Serious system limitations prevented TAFE NSW from providing sufficient and appropriate evidence to support recorded student revenue of $477 million, student receivables and accrued income of $47.6 million and unearned revenue of $398 million.
 
These limitations resulted in: 

• a qualified audit opinion being issued for TAFE NSW;
• delays in enrolling students;
• inability to fully reconcile cash balances;
• difficulties in reconciling student enrolments with revenues recorded in the financial statements;
• large volumes of manual processing.

The number of students enrolled in NSW public schools has increased by over 21,000 during the past five years taking total enrolments in 2014 to 763,698.
 
While growth in student numbers is concentrated in metropolitan Sydney, enrolments in Northern Sydney increased by 20 per cent in the past ten years.

Public transport revenue decreased by 2.7 per cent despite a fare increase and increased patronage. Twenty-five per cent of all Opal trips (over 74 million) were free, including 47 per cent of trips on ferries, according to a report released today by the New South Wales Acting Auditor-General, Tony Whitfield. These trips were valued at $189 million.

Generally, NSW universities are in a sound financial position, but average operating margins are falling and operating expenditure is growing faster than operative revenue.
 
The university sector’s average operating margin fell from 6.6 per cent in 2013 to 4.8 per cent in 2014 and combined operating expenditure grew 0.9 per cent more than operating revenue. Employee expenses in 2014 increased by an average of 5.1 per cent and other expenses by 5.8 per cent.
 
Operating expenditure grew at a faster pace than operating revenue at six of the ten NSW universities.

Roads and Maritime Services and Transport for NSW have deployed many controls to protect traffic management systems but these would have been only partially effective in detecting and preventing incidents and unlikely to support a timely response. There was a potential for unauthorised access to sensitive information and systems that could have disrupted traffic.
 
Until Roads and Maritime Services’ IT disaster recovery site is fully commissioned, a disaster involving the main data centre is likely to lead to higher congestion in the short-term as traffic controllers would be operating on a regional basis without the benefit of the Traffic Management Centre.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #248 - released 21 January 2015