Reports
Actions for Volume Eleven 2015 Education and Communities
Volume Eleven 2015 Education and Communities
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.
Actions for Volume Eight 2015 Family and Community Services
Volume Eight 2015 Family and Community Services
Placement reviews are not undertaken for all children and young people in statutory care. Caseworkers are required to review placements annually to assess the health, wellbeing, education and social life of the child. Over three-quarters of children and young people received placement reviews in 2014-15 compared to about half of them in the previous twelve months.
Actions for Volume Six 2015 Transport
Volume Six 2015 Transport
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.
Actions for Volume Five 2015 Premier and Cabinet
Volume Five 2015 Premier and Cabinet
Volume Five 2015 covered Premier and Cabinet agencies such as the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Office of Sport, Venues NSW, Barangaroo Delivery Authority and Infrastructure NSW.
Actions for Community Housing
Community Housing
On 16 September 2015 the NSW Acting Auditor-General, Tony Whitfield, released a report on community housing. The audit examines the Department of Family and Community Services’ transfer of public housing to non-government community housing providers.
The Department has worked collaboratively with community housing providers and industry groups to develop the community housing sector. Although there have been some delays, it has managed the transfer of public housing reasonably well and has improved the sustainability of the sector.
Parliamentary reference - Report number #259 - released 16 September 2015
Actions for Sydney metropolitan bus contracts
Sydney metropolitan bus contracts
On 9 September 2015, the Acting Auditor-General of New South Wales, Tony Whitfield, released a report on Sydney Metropolitan Bus Service Contracts.
All scheduled bus services in the Sydney metropolitan area are provided under contracts with the public and private operators. The contracts allow Transport for NSW (TfNSW) to determine what bus services are provided and to whom. This audit assessed the effectiveness of TfNSW’s design and management of these contracts.
Bus services provided under the Sydney Metropolitan Bus Service Contracts have largely been effective and efficient. Operators are mostly meeting their key performance indicators. Customer satisfaction is better than under the previous contracts and improving, patronage is increasing, and the unit costs of providing services are now lower than under the previous contracts.
However, punctuality remains a problem. Private operators are mostly starting their trips on time, but rarely meeting their mid and end-of-trip targets. State Transit Authority’s (STA) punctuality is improving but is worse than private operators, and other areas of performance are generally below private operators.
The current situation is a substantial improvement over what we found in our 2010 audit on the previous contracts.
Parliamentary reference - Report number #258 - released 9 September 2015
Actions for Transferring out-of-home care to non-government organisations
Transferring out-of-home care to non-government organisations
The audit assessed how well the Department of Family and Community Services has transferred the management of children in out-of-home care to non-government organisations (NGOs).
The Department has put considerable effort into developing the out-of-home care sector and is progressing well towards its goal of transferring all children in statutory care to NGOs. Since 2011, the number of children with an accredited NGO has more than doubled. This is a positive outcome as children are more likely to receive quality care because these providers meet NSW standards for outof-home care.
However, it is difficult to assess whether overall outcomes for children in care have improved. This is because the Department has yet to determine what wellbeing outcomes it wants to achieve, such as improvements in a child’s health, education and welfare. The Department is currently developing a quality assurance framework which will include such outcomes. We also found that the number of children in care returned to their birth family has declined, and the number of adoptions has remained relatively unchanged.
Parliamentary reference - Report number #257 - released 2 September 2015
Actions for Areas of focus from 2014
Areas of focus from 2014
Actions for Security of critical IT infrastructure
Security of critical IT infrastructure
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
Actions for Volume Eight 2013 focusing on Transport and Ports
Volume Eight 2013 focusing on Transport and Ports
Unqualified audit opinions were issued on the above corporations’ 30 June 2013 financial statements. During the year, Treasury issued TC 13/01 ‘Mandatory early close procedures for 2013’. This Circular aimed to improve the quality and timeliness of agencies’ annual financial statements. In 2012-13, application of the circular was made mandatory for State owned corporations. As a result, the port corporations were required to perform the early close procedures. All the port corporations were successful in performing the procedures, which helped them submit financial statements by an earlier due date. The early close procedures also resulted in general improvements to the quality of most financial statements.
The report recommends all transport entities should do more to reduce excessive annual leave balances to ensure they will comply with new targets set by the Premier, RailCorp, Sydney Trains and NSW Trains should minimise the amount of overtime bonuses paid to train drivers and that Transport for NSW should set targets to measure the overall satisfaction of train users.