Franchising services on the Sydney Ferries Network was justified, and Transport for NSW’s management of the franchise has been largely effective according to a report released today by the NSW Acting Auditor-General, Tony Whitfield.

'Franchising has resulted in cost savings, good service performance, and effective risk transfer from government to the private sector operator', said Mr Whitfield.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #265 - released 4 February 2016

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

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