Unqualified financial audit opinions

The financial statements of NSW Health and its 25 controlled entities received unqualified opinions.

The number of corrected and uncorrected misstatements increased from the prior year. Misstatements related predominantly to the implementation of new accounting standards, asset revaluations and accounting for new revenue streams to cover the cost of HSW Health’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualified compliance audit opinion

We issued a qualified audit opinion for the Ministry of Health’s Annual Prudential Compliance Statement for aged care facilities operated by NSW Health. We identified 18 instances of material non-compliance with the Fees and Payments Principles 2014 (No. 2) (the Principles) in 2019–20 (30 in 2018–19).

NSW Health received an additional $3.3 billion in funding to cover costs associated with its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cluster were significant for health entities and included changes to operations, increased revenues, expenditure, assets and liabilities. Cancellation of elective surgery and decreased emergency department presentations meant that despite the pandemic, activity levels at many health entities decreased. Health Pathology and HealthShare were notable exceptions.

In the period to the 30 June 2020, NSW Health reported that over 900,000 COVID-19 tests were conducted. Health Pathology conducted over 500,000 of these tests. Health Pathology's surge requirements were enhanced through arrangements with 13 private sector providers. HealthShare purchased $864.2 million of personal protective equipment.

Overall, NSW Health recorded an operating surplus of $3.1 billion in 2019–20, an increase of $2.0 billion from 2018–19. As in previous years, the surplus largely resulted from additional revenue received to fund capital projects including the construction of new facilities, upgrades and redevelopments. In 2019–20 additional Commonwealth and State funding for the purchase and stockpiling of personal protective equipment also contributed to the operating surplus.

We identified more internal control deficiencies in 2019–20. The number of repeat issues from prior years also remains high.

NSW Health addressed 18 out of the 25 information system control deficiencies during the year.

Several key agreements lacked formal documentation. This included agreements between the Ministry and health entities, between health entities and agencies in other clusters and between the Ministry and health departments in other jurisdictions.

The Treasury extended the statutory deadline for the submission of the 2019–20 financial statements. For agencies subject to Treasurer's Directions, Treasury required agencies to submit their 30 June 2020 financial statements by 5 August 2020. For other agencies, the deadline was extended to 31 October 2020. All agencies in the cluster met the revised statutory deadlines.

Cluster agencies substantially completed the mandatory early close procedures set by NSW Treasury. However, nine agencies including the Department of Communities and Justice (the department) did not complete one or more mandatory requirements, such as assessing the impact of new and updated accounting standards.

Emergency events significantly impacted cluster agencies in 2019–20. Our review of seven cluster agencies most affected highlighted some had incurred additional expenditure because of the bushfires and floods. Others lost revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the year these agencies collectively received additional funding of $1.1 billion from the State to respond to:

• increased demand for homeless people seeking temporary accommodation
• additional cleaning requirements
• bushfire recovery efforts
• emergency support for eligible small businesses.

The Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, Venues NSW and Office of Sport lodged insurance claims of $51.3 million with the Treasury Managed Fund with respect to lost revenues from the pandemic. The losses were mainly due to event cancellations and covered various periods ranging from mid-March to 31 December 2020.

The change in economic conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the NSW Government cancelling the refurbishment of Stadium Australia it had previously approved in August 2019. Venues NSW wrote off $16.8 million of redevelopment costs during 2019–20.

The department continues to address significant data quality issues resulting from its implementation of the VS Connect system (the System) in 2019. The issues relate to the completeness and accuracy of the data transferred from the legacy system. The System is used by the department to manage its Victims Support Services (VSS) and for financial reporting purposes.

An independent actuary helps the department estimate its liability for VSS claims. The actuary's valuation at 30 June 2020 was again impacted by the data quality issues. Consequently, the actuary adopted a revised valuation methodology compared to previous years.

Recommendation (repeat issue):

The department should resolve the data quality issues in the VS Connect System before 31 March 2021.

Cluster agencies implemented three new accounting standards for the first time in 2019–20. Adoption of AASB 16 'Leases' resulted in cluster agencies collectively recognising right-of-use assets and lease liabilities of $1.7 billion and $1.1 billion respectively on 1 July 2019.

Significant misstatements in how lease related balances had been calculated were found in 17 of the 29 cluster agencies. The cluster outsources the management of most of its owned and leased property portfolio to Property NSW, but cluster agencies remain responsible for any deliverables under that arrangement. The misstatements were mainly caused by late revisions of key assumptions and issues with the accuracy and completeness of Property NSW's lease information.

Our 2019–20 financial audits identified 191 internal control issues. Of these, two were high risk and almost one-third were repeat findings from previous audits. While repeat findings reduced by 5.7 percentage points in 2019–20, the number remains high.

Recommendation (repeat issue):

Cluster agencies should action recommendations to address internal control weaknesses promptly. Focus should be given to addressing high risk and repeat issues.

The severity of the recent bushfires and floods meant natural disaster expenses incurred by emergency services agencies rose from $67.4 million in 2018–19 to $497 million in 2019–20.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges for the cluster. Social distancing and other infection control measures disrupted the traditional means of delivering services. Agencies established committees or response teams to respond to these challenges.

The department introduced measures to minimise the risk of the spread of COVID-19 amongst inmates in custodial settings.

Managing excess annual leave was a challenge for cluster agencies directly involved in the government's response to the emergency events. Employees in frontline cluster agencies deferred leave plans and many have taken little or no annual leave during the reporting period.

Annual leave liabilities rose at the department, NSW Police Force, Fire and Rescue NSW, Office of the NSW Rural Fire Service, the Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The combined liabilities increased from $620 million to $692 million or 11.6 per cent between 30 June 2019 and 30 June 2020.

Administrative Arrangement Orders effective from 1 July 2019, created the department of Communities and Justice and transferred functions and staff, together with associated assets and liabilities into the department from the former departments of Justice and Family and Community Services.

The department continues to establish its governance arrangements following the MoG changes.

Recommendation:

The department should finalise appropriate governance arrangements for its new organisational structure as soon as possible. This includes:

• harmonising policies and procedures to ensure a unified approach across the department
• finalising risk management and monitoring processes across the department
• updating its delegation instruments to reflect the current organisational structure, delegation limits and roles and responsibilities.

The department continued to expand prison system capacity through the NSW Government's $3.8 billion Prison Bed Capacity Program. The department reported it spent $480 million on the Program in 2019–20. Six prison expansion projects were completed during the year, which added 1,660 new and 395 refurbished beds to the NSW prison system.

Data from the department shows the number of adult inmates in the NSW prison system reached a maximum of 14,165 during the year. Operational capacity was 16,096 beds on 19 August 2020.

Section highlights

• Unqualified audit opinions were issued for all agencies' 30 June 2020 financial statements. All agencies met the revised statutory deadlines for completing early close procedures and submitting their financial statements.
• Emergency events significantly impacted cluster agencies in 2019–20. Agencies received additional funding of $1.1 billion to respond to the emergencies.
• Cluster agencies implemented three new accounting standards in 2019–20. Adoption of AASB 16 'Leases' resulted in significant changes to agencies' financial statements.

Section highlights

• Almost one-third of internal control issues reported were repeat findings. Cluster agencies should address these issues more promptly.
• The severity of the recent bushfires and floods meant natural disaster expenses incurred by emergency services agencies increased by $430 million in 2019–20.
• The department continues to establish its governance arrangements following Machinery of Government changes effective 1 July 2019.

Internal control deficiencies increased by 13 per cent compared to last year. This is predominately due to a seven per cent increase in new internal control deficiencies and 24 per cent increase in repeat internal control deficiencies. There were ten high risk findings compared to four last year.

The recent emergencies have consumed agency time and resources and may have contributed to the increase in internal control deficiencies, particularly repeat deficiencies.

Agencies should:

• prioritise addressing high-risk findings
• address repeat internal control deficiencies by re-setting action plans and timeframes and monitoring the implementation status of recommendations.

A number of findings remain common across multiple agencies over the last four years, including:

• out of date or missing policies to guide appropriate decisions
• poor record keeping and document retention
• incomplete or inaccurate centralised registers or gaps in these registers.

We found deficiencies in information security controls over key financial systems including:

• user access administration deficiencies relating to inadequate oversight of the granting, review and removal of user access at 53 per cent of agencies
• privileged users were not appropriately monitored at 43 per cent of agencies
• deficient password controls that did not align to the agency's own password policies at 25 per cent of agencies.

The deficiencies above increase the risk of non-compliance with the NSW Cyber Security Policy, which requires agencies to have processes in place to manage user access, including privileged user access to sensitive information or systems and remove that access once it is not required or employment is terminated.

The response to the recent emergencies and the COVID-19 pandemic has encompassed a wide range of activities, including policy setting, on-going service delivery, safety and availability of staff, availability of IT and other systems and financial management. Agencies were required to activate their business continuity plans in response, and with the continued impact of COVID-19 have not yet returned to a business-as-usual environment.

Our audits focused on the preparedness of agency business continuity and disaster recovery planning arrangements prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We identified deficiencies in agency business continuity and disaster recovery planning arrangements. Twenty-three per cent of agencies had not conducted a business impact analysis (BIA) to identify critical business functions and determine business continuity priorities. Agencies can also improve the content of their BIA. For example, ten per cent of agencies' BIAs did not include recovery time objectives and six per cent of agencies did not identify key IT systems that support critical business functions. Scenario testing improves the effectiveness with which a live crisis is handled, but 40 per cent of agencies had not conducted a business continuity scenario testing exercise in the period from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019. There were also opportunities to improve the effectiveness of scenario testing exercises by:

• involving key dependent or inter-dependent third parties who support or deliver critical business functions
• testing one or more high impact scenarios identified in their business continuity plan
• preparing a formalpost-exercise report documenting the outcome of their scenario testing.

Agencies have responded to the recent emergencies but addressing deficiencies will ensure agencies have adequate safeguards in their processes to again respond in the future, if required.

During 2020–21 we plan to conduct a performance audit on 'Business continuity and disaster recovery planning'. This audit will consider the effectiveness of agency business continuity planning arrangements to maintain business continuity through the recent emergencies and/or COVID-19 pandemic and return to a business-as-usual environment. We also plan to conduct a performance audit on whole-of-government 'Coordination of emergency responses'.

We found agencies' governance functions could have been better informed about responses to disruptive incidents that had activated a business continuity or disaster recovery response between 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019. For instance:

in 89 per cent of instances where a business continuity response was activated, a post-incident review had been performed. In 82 per cent of these instances, the outcomes were reported to a relevant governance or executive management committee

in 95 per cent of instances where a disaster recovery response was activated, a post incident review had been performed. In 86 per cent of these instances, the outcomes were reported to a relevant governance committee or executive management committee.

Examples of recorded incidents included extensive air quality issues and power outages due to bushfires, system and network outages, and infected and hijacked servers.

Agencies should assess their response to the recent emergencies and the COVID-19 pandemic and update business continuity, disaster recovery and other business resilience frameworks to incorporate lessons learned. Agencies should report to those charged with governance on the results and planned actions.

Agency procurement policies did not capture the requirements of several key NSW Procurement Board Directions (the Directions), increasing the risk of non-compliance with the Directions. We noted: 

• 67 per cent of agencies did specify that procurement above $650,000 must be open to market unless exempt or procured through an existing Whole of Government Scheme or contract
• 36 per cent of agencies did specify that procurements above $500,000 payable in foreign currencies must be hedged
• 69 per cent of agencies' policies did specify that the agency head or cluster CFO must authorise the engagement of consultants where the engagement of the supplier does not comply with the standard commercial framework.

Recommendation: Agencies should review their procurement policies and guidelines to ensure they capture the key requirements of the NSW Government Procurement Policy Framework, including NSW Procurement Board Directions.

Eighty-eight per cent of agencies maintain a central contract register to record all details of contracts above $150,000, which is a requirement of GIPA legislation. Of the agencies that maintained registers, 13 per cent did not capture all contracts and eight per cent did not include all relevant contract details.

Sixteen per cent of agencies did not periodically review their contract register. Timely review increases compliance with GIPA legislation, and enhances the effectiveness with which procurement business units monitor contract end dates, contract extensions and commence new procurement.

Ninety-three per cent of agencies provide training to staff involved in procurement processes, and a further 77 per cent of agencies provide this training on an on-going basis. Of the seven per cent of agencies that had not provided training to staff, we noted gaps in aspects of their procurement activity, including:

• not conducting value for money assessments prior to renewing or extending the contract with their existing supplier
• not obtaining approval from a delegated authority to commence the procurement process
• procurement documentation not specifying certain key details such as the conditions for participation including any financial guarantees and dates for the delivery of goods or supply of services.

Training on procurement activities ensures there is effective management of procurement processes to support operational requirements, and compliance with procurement directions.

As at 30 June 2020, agencies within the scope of this report reported conducting 32,239 emergency procurements with a total contract value of $316,908,485. Emergency procurement activities included the purchase of COVID-19 cleaning and hygiene supplies.

The government, through NSW Procurement released the 'COVID-19 Emergency procurement procedure', which relaxed procurement requirements to allow agencies to make COVID-19 emergency procurements. Our review against the emergency procurement measures found most agencies complied with requirements. For example:

• 95 per cent of agencies documented an assessment of the need for the emergency procurement for the good and/or service
• 86 per cent of agencies obtained authorisation of the emergency procurement by the agency head or the nominated employee under Public Works and Procurement Regulation 2019
• 76 per cent of agencies reported the emergency procurement to the NSW Procurement Board.

Complying with the procedure helps to ensure government resources are being efficiently, effectively, economically and in accordance with the law.

Recommendation: Agency procurement frameworks should be reviewed and updated so they can respond effectively to emergency situations that may arise in the future. This includes:

• updating procurement policies and guidelines to define an emergency situation, specify who can approve emergency procurement and capture other key requirements
• using standard templates and documentation to prompt users to capture key requirements, such as needs analysis, supplier selection criteria, price assessment criteria, licence and insurance checks
• having processes for reporting on emergency procurements to those charged with governance and NSW Procurement.

We found that agencies have established financial and human resources delegations, but some had not revisited their delegation manuals following the legislative and machinery of government changes. For those agencies impacted by machinery of government changes we noted:

• 16 per cent of agencies had not updated their financial delegations to reflect the changes
• 16 per cent of agencies did not update their human resources delegations to reflect the changes.

Delegations manuals are not always complete; 16 per cent of agencies had no delegation for writing off bad debts and 26 per cent of agencies had no delegation for writing off capital assets.

Recommendation: Agencies should ensure their financial and human resources delegation manuals contain regular set review dates and are updated to reflect the Government Sector Finance Act 2018, machinery of government changes and their current organisational structure and roles and responsibilities.

Agencies did not understand or correctly apply the requirements of the Government Sector Finance Act 2018 (GSF Act), resulting in non-compliance with the Act. We found that 18 per cent of agencies spent deemed appropriations without obtaining an authorised delegation from the relevant Minister(s), as required by sections 4.6(1) and 5.5(3) of the GSF Act.

Further detail on this issue will be included in our Auditor-General's Reports to Parliament on Central Agencies, Education, Health and Stronger Communities, which will be tabled throughout December 2020.

Recommendation: Agencies should review financial and human resources delegations to ensure they capture all key functions of laws and regulations, and clearly specify the relevant power or function being conferred on the officer.

Recommendations were made last year to improve transparency over reporting on gifts and benefits and improve the visibility management and those charged with governance had over actions taken to address conflicts of interest that may arise. This year, we continue to note:

• 38 per cent of agencies have not updated their gifts and benefits register to include all the key fields required under the minimum standards set by the Public Service Commission
• 56 per cent of agencies have not provided training to staff and 63 per cent of agencies have not implemented an annual attestation process for senior management
• 97 per cent of agencies have not published their gifts and benefits register on their website and 41 per cent of agencies are not reporting on trends in the gifts and benefits register to those charged with governance.

While we acknowledge the significance of the recent emergencies, which have consumed agency time and resources, we note limited progress has been made implementing these recommendations. Further detail on the status of implementing all recommendations is in Appendix 2.

Recommendation: Agencies should re-visit the recommendations made in last year's report on internal controls and governance and action these recommendations.

Section highlights

We identified ten high risk findings, compared to four last year with two findings repeated from the previous year. There was an overall increase of 13 per cent in the number of internal control deficiencies compared to last year due to a seven per cent increase in new internal control deficiencies, and a 24 per cent increase in repeat internal control deficiencies. The recent emergencies have consumed agency time and resources and may have contributed to the increase in internal control deficiencies, particularly repeat deficiencies.

We identified a number of findings that remain common across multiple agencies over the last four years. Some of these findings related to areas that are fundamental to good internal control environments and effective organisational governance. Examples include:

• out of date or missing policies to guide appropriate decisions
• poor record keeping and document retention
• incomplete or inaccurate centralised registers, or gaps in these registers.

Policies, procedures and internal controls should be properly designed, be appropriate for the current organisational structure and its business activities, and work effectively.

Section highlights

Government agencies’ financial reporting is heavily reliant on information technology (IT). We continue to see a high number of deficiencies related to IT general controls, particularly those related to user access administration. These controls are key in adequately protecting IT systems from inappropriate access and misuse.

IT is also important to the delivery of agency services. These systems often provide the data to help monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of agency processes and services they deliver. Our financial audits do not review all agency IT systems. For example, IT systems used to support agency service delivery are generally outside the scope of our financial audit. However, agencies should also consider the relevance of our findings to these systems.

Agencies need to continue to focus on assessing the risks of inappropriate access and misuse and the implementation of controls to adequately protect their systems, focussing on the processes in place to grant, remove and monitor user access, particularly privileged user access.

Section highlights

We identified deficiencies in agency business continuity and disaster recovery planning arrangements and opportunities for agencies to enhance their business continuity management and disaster recovery planning arrangements. This will better prepare them to respond to a disruption to their critical functions, resulting from an emergency or other serious event. Twenty-three per cent of agencies had not conducted a business impact analysis (BIA) to identify critical business functions and determine business continuity priorities and 40 per cent of agencies had not conducted a business continuity scenario testing exercise in the period from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019. Scenario testing improves the effectiveness with which a live crisis is handled.

This section focusses on the preparedness of agency business continuity and disaster recovery planning arrangements prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While agencies have responded to the recent emergencies, proactively addressing deficiencies will ensure agencies have adequate safeguards in their processes to again respond in the future, if required.

During 2020–21 we plan to conduct a performance audit on 'Business continuity and disaster recovery planning'. This audit will consider the effectiveness of agency business continuity planning arrangements to maintain business continuity through the recent emergencies and/or COVID-19 pandemic and return to a business-as-usual environment. We also plan to conduct a performance audit on whole-of-government 'Coordination of emergency responses'.

Section highlights

We found agencies have procurement policies in place to manage procurement activity, but the content of these policies was not sufficiently detailed to ensure compliance with NSW Procurement Board Directions (the Directions). The Directions aim to ensure procurement activity achieves value for money and meets the principles of probity and fairness.

Agencies have generally implemented controls over their procurement process. In relation to emergency procurement activity, agencies reported conducting 32,239 emergency procurements with a total contract value of $316,908,485 up to 30 June 2020. Our review of emergency procurement activity conducted during 2019–20 identified areas where some agencies did not fully comply with the 'COVID-19 Emergency procurement procedure'.

We also found not all agencies are maintaining complete and accurate contract registers. This not only increases the risk of non-compliance with GIPA legislation, but also limits the effectiveness of procurement business units to monitor contract end dates, contract extensions and commence new procurement in a timely manner. We noted instances where agencies renewed or extended contracts without going through a competitive tender process during the year.