[Peetwo]

Fresh off the Mandarin - The Belcher report released 

Belcher quote: “There is, similarly, a need to identify and remove the many unnecessary requirements entities place upon themselves either to avoid risk or because, over time, myths have replaced facts.”

Red tape sale: agencies agree on sweeping regulatory reform

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Departments and agencies across the federal government will implement sweeping reporting reforms to cut red tape in a regulatory environment described in a new report as inefficient, inaccessible and risk averse.

The Department of Finance has publicly released its Review of Whole-of-Government Internal Regulation, conducted by respected former public servant Barbara Belcher. Agency heads received the report in September and October and have already agreed to implement all 134 recommendations they have the power to do.

The changes focus on reducing excessive regulation by streamlining security vetting processes, removing duplication of reporting, improving accessibility of information, clarifying guidance, introducing electronic tabling in Parliament and improving annual reports.

Finance secretary Jane Halton (pictured) says central regulating agencies — the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Attorney-General’s Department, Australian Public Service Commission and Finance — have already “made a good start on progressing some of these”. In a statement, she said future regulation will be “better targeted, more effective and, ultimately, uses less of our scarce resources”:

“This will allow us to be better focussed on delivering services for the community. The review will help us to test future regulation against a set of principles, to avoid the future occurrence of red tape …

“The review found many regulatory requirements are appropriately and efficiently administered, but others are not. Some regulation was put in place when entity capability was significantly lower than today, and before the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013‘s focus on risk, performance and duties.

“The Secretaries Board is committed to progressing the review’s recommendations.”

The key issues identified in the Belcher report: rules and guidance that is either inaccessible or hard to interpret, over-regulation, inefficient regulation, and the famous “culture of risk-aversion” that is regularly criticised.

Portfolio secretaries have agreed to move towards a “collect once, use many times” approach to data collection and maximise the ability of senior executives to make the big strategic decisions, while pushing as much responsibility down to middle managers and below as possible.

Each will also determine their agency’s risk appetite to encourage innovation, and review their freedom-of-information practices to find the “least burdensome mechanism”. The secretaries agreed to “consider” actively publishing information to decrease FOI requests as well.

Belcher articulates five principles which say all new internal regulations should be:

• The minimum needed to achieve whole-of-government or entity outcomes;
  
• Proportional to the risks to be managed and supportive of a risk-based approach;
  
• Coherent across government and not duplicative;
  
• Designed in consultation with stakeholders for clarity and simplicity in application; and
  
• Reviewed periodically to test relevance and impact.
  

The recommendations sit well with the management reforms catalysed by the PGPA Act, particularly what Belcher describes as:

“The push towards removing prescriptive legislative controls and moving to principles and duties-based accountability arrangements … with corresponding strengthening of mechanisms for risk management and public accountability for performance.”

It will be especially important, she writes, that the five principles are kept in mind as the APS also continues with:

“… the increasing centralisation of some functions through shared and common services, the digital transformation agenda, low risk procurement contracts and whole-of-government purchasing arrangements, new reporting requirements such as monthly reporting to the Australian Public Service Commission of unscheduled absences and consolidation of Enterprise Resource Management systems.”

The mandarins told her that some of these whole-of-government requirements and procedures have “constrained their ability to realise benefits” from the PGPA reforms.
Belcher’s impression is that, by and large, APS entities “aspire to, and are prepared to work for, a public sector freed of excessive regulation and risk aversion” and she credits them for starting to push decision-making back down to lower classification levels. She comments:

“There is a continuing role for senior management in identifying a way of managing risk that encourages innovation and gives responsibility and experience in decision-making to future leaders in the public sector.

“There is, similarly, a need to identify and remove the many unnecessary requirements entities place upon themselves either to avoid risk or because, over time, myths have replaced facts.”

More to come, including an interview with Finance secretary Jane Halton …

Here is the Belcher report webpage link - The independent Review of Whole-of-Government Internal Regulation (Belcher Red Tape Review)
And this is a summary of the key findings:

The independent Review of Whole-of-Government Internal Regulation (Belcher Red Tape Review) - Key findings


The review identified opportunities to remove internal red tape across whole-of-government and entities, to facilitate public sector agility and enhance collaboration and innovation.

Ms Belcher noted four whole-of-government themes, which emerged in the course of the Review, including:

• over regulation
  
• inefficient regulation
  
• unclear and inaccessible regulations and guidance, and
  
• a culture of risk aversion.
  
  

Addressing these areas provides the opportunity to improve public sector agility and culture. To ensure these benefits are maintained the Review’s primary recommendation is to develop all regulation, within and across entities, against five Principles for Internal Regulation.

These require regulation to be:

• the minimum needed to achieve whole-of-government or entity outcomes
  
• proportional to the risks to be managed and supportive of a risk-based approach
  
• coherent across government and not duplicative
  
• designed in consultation with stakeholders for clarity and simplicity in application, and
  
• reviewed periodically to test relevance and impact.
  
  

Greatest reductions in regulation
The Review noted that recommendations likely to yield the greatest reduction in regulation are those that propose:

• removing requirements for baseline security clearances for ongoing staff, relying instead on basic employment screening (21.5)
  
• reducing unnecessary and duplicated information collection processes, compliance certification, evaluations of external law firms under the Legal Services Directions and the Harradine motion for reporting on file titles (4.4, 8.4, 8.5, 13.1)
  
• reducing duplicated work by moving to online, continuously updated reporting on contracts, grants, consultancies and appointments, and enabling users to analyse the data and generate reports (8.5, 8.6)
  
• reducing printing and design costs by moving to electronic tabling in Parliament, and reducing requirements for government documents that continue to be tabled in Parliament in hard copy (12.2)
  
• streamlining investment and assurance processes to focus on higher risk projects and removing processes that encourage a ‘check-a-box’ mentality (3.1-3.9)
  
• streamlining and reducing property, fraud and financial reporting requirements, with particular emphasis on benefits to small entities (2.3, 2.6, 6.2, 10.2)
  
• better targeting of ICT benchmarking to focus on heavy users of ICT, and gathering minimal data from lighter ICT users (7.8)
  
• clarifying mandatory requirements and better practice suggestions in guidance (1.5-1.9, 2.5, 22), and
  
• encouraging the creation of sample templates, processes, contracts and guidelines for lower and higher risk activities and functions, particularly for internal processes for procurement and human resources (1.5, 5 generally,11.2, 22).
  
  

Actions for entities
Portfolio secretaries agreed to a set of actions to be implemented within entities in response to the review. These are to:

• assess current and future internal regulation with the Principles for Internal Regulation (1.1)
  
• review data collection exercises, and planning and reporting requirements to consolidate duplicate data collection and ‘collect once, use many times’ (1.3)
  
• actively assist portfolio entities to meet regulatory requirements (for portfolio departments)  (1.13)
  
• maximise responsibility of SES Band 1 and 2s to make strategic corporate decisions (1.14)
  
• review delegations and give greater responsibility to junior levels where possible, including to EL and APS officers (1.15)
  
• establish an acceptable level of risk to encourage innovation (1.16)
  
• reduce internal systems and processes for Austender notification (5.5)
  
• provide portfolio departments with access to the Central Budget Management System to reduce duplication in monthly expenditure reporting (10.1)
  
• support the implementation of electronic tabling (12.2)
  
• introduce electronic distribution systems for Cabinet documents as a priority (14.3)
  
• examine FOI practices to ensure they impose the least burdensome mechanism and consider actively publishing information to decrease FOI requests (17.1)
  
• implementing fit-for-purpose HR policies and practices in consultation with the APSC (22.2)
  
• review internal performance management systems (22.5)
  
• promote informal consultation as the first step in dispute resolution processes (22.7)
  
• review recruitment processes to ensure they are not unnecessarily burdensome, (22.9) building on new guidance to be produced by the APSC (22.8).
  

Last updated: 05 November 2015

Great initiative but with the recent 'up yours' from Murky Mandarin & Doc Aleck to the CASA Board - see here - and past history (some 20 odd years of avoiding real reform)...

..Identification of problem – 101 for the student pilot, second nature to the experienced.  When there is a problem a process of elimination will identify the cause.  Within CASA there exists a serious objection to being reformed.  When you add up the past two decades worth of inquiry, commissions etc. you find a staggering number of ‘reforms’ which have been stepped around, diluted, manipulated or blatantly ignored.  Those ‘reforms’ have been generated by Senators, Ministers, Commissioners and Coroners; none based on whimsy, but cold hard facts...

..But, prima facie, the CASA resistance to reform must be lead, the reasoning for change must be manipulated, diffused, diverted and delayed.  There are only two men left standing; one of whom could be dealt with by the CASA board.  In isolation would the hapless Skidmore follow his leader?  Then perhaps we could, as the ASA must do; open the doors to real talent, select a reform DAS and deputy, then get this bloody reform show on the road; before we run out of juice, sitting frustrated at the holding point...

...it is quite obvious that they have absolutely no intention of warmly embracing any of the Belcher recommendations - FFS why can't we have a Thawley or a Halton running the show??
MTF...P2