The Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford released a report today highlighting a decline in net profits of electricity agencies and the distributions the government received from these agencies. The report also details continuing issues in the management of Crown Land and TAFE NSW's student administration system.

Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford released a report on the planning and environment cluster today, concluding that the quality of financial reporting is improving. However, the cluster can improve its financial controls and governance framework.

In a report released today, the NSW Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford provides a snapshot of reported fraud in the NSW public sector and an analysis of NSW Government agencies’ fraud controls based on a survey of 102 agencies.

The NSW Government’s ‘program evaluation initiative’, introduced to assess whether service delivery programs achieve expected outcomes and value for money, is largely ineffective according to a report released today by NSW Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford.

Government services, in areas such as public order and safety, health and education, are delivered by agencies through a variety of programs. In 2016–17, the NSW Government estimates that it will spend over $73 billion on programs to deliver services.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #277 - released 3 November 2016

New South Wales has a lower rate of foodborne illness than the national average. This reflects some good practices in the NSW Food Authority’s approach to monitoring food safety standards. It also is a factor of the long-standing commitment by local councils’ to ensuring retail food businesses meet these standards.

To ensure foodborne illness remains low, the Authority needs to better monitor its arrangements with councils which inspect retail food businesses on its behalf, and receive additional and more timely information from councils on compliance with food safety standards.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #274 - released 15 September 2016

The management of the sale and lease of Crown land is not effective because oversight of decision-making is inadequate and community involvement is limited, according to a report released today by NSW Auditor-General, Margaret Crawford.

The audit found limited oversight of sales and leases of Crown land by the Department of Industry - Lands. The Department has only just started monitoring whether tenants are complying with lease conditions, and does not have a clear view of what is happening on most leased Crown land. The majority of guidance provided to staff has not been updated in the past decade, contributing to staff not correctly implementing policies on rental rebates, unpaid rent, rent redeterminations and the direct negotiation of sales and leases on Crown land.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #273 - released 8 September 2016

The audit’s overall conclusion is that Lands and Maritime are broadly achieving outcomes consistent with the IPART report on administering domestic waterfront tenancies. But a lack of collaboration between the agencies is contributing to poor customer service. Inconsistencies with the IPART report recommendations and operational differences between the two agencies result in different rents and conditions for tenants in the two agencies. The differences are having a significant impact on customer service.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #191 - released 23 September 2009

We found many aspects of good grants management, particularly in the Trust. All of the programs we looked at are clearly aligned to the Government’s objective to improve environmental outcomes. The Trust also has good practices for allocating grants. Performance in respect of results was mixed although many grants delivered tangible benefits - homes were protected from floods, degraded waterways restored and endangered habitats protected.

Generally we found that while both Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water and the NSW Environmental Trust had a range of strategies to monitor grants these were not always applied consistently or effectively. Grant programs need to be regularly evaluated to see what is working and what can be done better.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #190 - released 26 August 2009

Reliably supplying water to our State’s principal city, Sydney, is a major responsibility for the Government.

The community has been made keenly aware in recent years that inflows have been decreasing, and that Sydney has been using more water than is available. In April 2005 the water in Sydney’s storages dropped to 41.5 per cent of their capacity – the lowest level since the construction of Warragamba dam in 1960.

As Sydney continues to develop, it is expected that the demand for water will increase. The way that we use it will need to be sustainable, as it has a direct impact on our economy, our lifestyle and our environment.

In planning for the future the State’s water agencies face a range of uncertainties. But the task is vital.

This report informs Parliament and the community on the progress made - and what remains to be done - to ensure a reliable water supply for Sydney.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #135 - released 4 May 2005

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, often no procedures for assessing applications, no assessment guidelines for advisory committees, often no clear rationale for assessments and poor documentation of the reasons for decisions.

Parliamentary reference - Report number #104 - released 4 December 2002