Without a capable, sustainable, and innovative industry, our Territory and our communities would suffer. Commissioning needs to value and build a diverse, responsive, and capable non-government sector, including through a focus on workforce. Innovation can also mean how existing services are refreshed or reinvigorated with new service models or approaches that can better meet community needs.
Commissioning terminology and intentions
Challenge – to assure the integrity of commissioning in meaning, practice, and intentions
- Everyone involved shares responsibility for the integrity of commissioning.
- We are guardians of commissioning terminology, explaining what we mean and ensuring the terminology is applied true to its meaning across cycles.
- We are advocates of commissioning as a practice, promoting the shared principles as a guide to how commissioning should be undertaken and experienced within cycles.
- We develop, provide, and use transparent tools that set commissioning intentions, signal priorities, and enable all stakeholders to collaborate, in a planned way, aware of each commissioning cycle and the overall system impacts.
Our action (s)
– To maintain integrity of commissioning practice as it expands to new Directorates
– To continue to develop tools that support stakeholders to understand commissioning terminology and practice
– To provide transparent and accurate tools that manage stakeholder expectations and support collaboration in commissioning cycles and the overall system impacts.
Contributes to reform outcome (s)
– Better respond to community need, both existing and emerging, through increased flexibility and opportunities for innovation.
Constrained budgets
Our challenge – consistently exploring options to scale, prioritise and triage investment in services and connecting funding opportunities identified through commissioning to government processes such as the ACT Budget.
- Budgets will always be constrained therefore addressing questions of scale, prioritisation and triaging within and between sub-systems will be essential.
- Understanding the scale and severity of the problem or need to be addressed as well as the scale, feasibility and efficacy of proposed responses needs to occur both within the context of the sub-system being commissioned, across the health and social systems more broadly, and in the context of other competing budget priorities.
- Beyond commissioning, government, officials, the sector, and the community more broadly all have roles to play in informing investment priorities through the Budget process.
- Government policies and priorities will consistently inform commissioning outcomes and as we progress, commissioning outcomes will also be available to inform budget processes.
- It can be difficult to shift thinking from what we have always done to identify and overcome barriers to change that limit flexibility, innovation, efficiency and an openness to working differently within existing resource constraints.
Our action (s)
– Strengthening the connection between commissioning cycles that identify areas for investment, the ACT Budget process & ACT Wellbeing Framework.
– Supporting participants in commissioning cycles to identify ways to scale, prioritise and triage investment in services to maximise outcomes.
– Supporting participants in commissioning cycles to identify where service redesign can introduce innovations or efficiencies, or pivot investment towards most impactful activities, within existing resource allocations.
Contributes to reform outcome (s)
– Reduce the pressure on our hospitals and other crisis services such as homelessness or statutory services for children, young people, and families, by prioritising prevention and early support.
Transitions within the sector, to services and to the system
Our challenge – how to manage transitions in and out of services
- The outcomes of commissioning processes will lead to some service transitions.
- Non-government organisations may transition into or out of delivering a particular service or service type.
- They may also transition from one service model to another, change something about their target group and/or shift to new ways of gathering and using data.
- Government delivered services may also transition in what they deliver and in how they integrate with other services.
- It is important that the government and the sector work together to understand how best to make these transitions.
Our action (s)
– Identify lessons learnt from previous transitions within the sector and work collaboratively to establish an approach to manage transitions effectively, considering contract terms, service continuity, sector capacity and workforce capability.
– To lead early identification and mitigation of transition impacts that could have unintended consequences or impacts on the sector landscape.
Contributes to reform outcome (s)
– Improve sector sustainability through closer partnerships and better understanding the needs of our service delivery partners.
Sector sustainability
Our challenge – understanding the impact of individual commissioning processes on the sector as a whole.
- The ACT NGO sector comprises a mix of small and large, local, regional and national, specialist and generalist organisations
- A vibrant, diverse and sustainable sector is likely to contain an evolving mix of organisations
- Work is already underway, through the Counting the Costs report to better understand current and future issues with sector sustainability
- There is a risk that individual procurement decisions could over time, distort the shape of the sector such that it loses diversity, vibrancy or sustainability
Our action(s):
- Through commissioning we evolve contracting, procurement, and reporting requirements to minimise duplication and red tape and reflect the shift to a partnership approach
- Ensure impacts on broader sector are considered during market assessments and investment phases
- Implement agreed actions in response to Counting the Costs report.
Contributes to reform outcome(s)
– Improve sector sustainability through closer partnerships and better understanding the needs of our service delivery partners.
Page updated: 28 Feb 2024
