Update on our 2024 reform work priorities

Over the past 2 months the Sector Sustainability Project has consulted with staff in NGOs and ACT Government to develop advice to decision-makers on:

1. Categories of costs that should be included in funding proposals (when being developed by government and when being presented by NGOs) that cover all costs of service delivery including:
   • service activities/delivery
   • quality control and evaluation
   • service improvement
   • including systemic reform and improving equity of outcomes
   • visibility and communication
   • reporting, human resources, technology
   • infrastructure including facilities and transport
   • procurement
   • legal
   • business development
   • auditing and Governance (including risk management)
2. Enabling a tailored approach to allocation of costs across these categories, according to the objectives of the program and the context for delivery of the program.
3. Expanding the criteria for defining and assessing value for money of human services - to include Economic, Efficiency and Effectiveness (current Procurement ACT guidance) and add Equity and Embeddedness criteria - and to expand the guidance material provided to inform the design, delivery and evaluation of procurement and grant-making activities.
4. Articulating the risks in long term partnerships between government and NGOs and determining shared responsibilities in management of these risks: contractual, resourcing, objectives, structural, commitment, operating environment, communication, trust/monitoring, intersectional.
5. Short term measures to improve the efficiency of funding arrangements:
   • change payment of grants and contracts from quarterly schedule to two payments per year in July and January
   • remove requirement for wet ink signatures to enable collection of electronic signatures
   • streamlined acquittal processes through an organisation wide acquittal with each stream of funding provided as a separate program line in audit instead of program specific and separate audit
   • enable adoption of Recipient Created Tax Invoice to reduce need for NGOs to create invoices
   • update the Funding Managers Guide and ensure all relevant staff in ACT Government and in NGOs have consistent training on funding management processes.
6. Longer term priorities for action to improve funding efficiency require further development. Advice from NGOs is that these measures should focus on streamlining reporting requirements and strengthening the focus when analysing reports on future service development and better understanding contribution of funding programs to health and wellbeing outcomes.

Over the next 2 months the focus of engagement activities will be on:

1. Seeking authorisation inside ACT Government to implement advice as outlined above.
2. Seeking input from NGOs on the impact of the updated community sector indexation formula on covering the year-on-year increases in costs of human service delivery, noting indexation is not able to address problems with funding keeping up with changes in demand.
3. Consulting on a proposed approach to conducting an initial assessment of what data is collected, and what this data tells us about unmet need and gaps in prevention and early intervention.
4. Working with the University of Western Australia to engage with sector and government stakeholders on development of resources to support understanding of full cost pricing.

If you would like to participate in these activities, please email yasir.zaidi@crcs.com.au so we can add you to the Sector Sustainability Project mailing lists.

Find out more: Sector Sustainability Program

Integration of the human services system is one of the outcomes we are seeking to achieve. But to do that, we need to better understand integration and what is already working in the ACT.

So we are:

• Testing what a high-level sample service map across multiple sectors might tell us about potential and actual referral pathways across the health and human services system; and
• Having deep conversations with NGOs and Government services that are already providing good integrated services to understand what needs to be going well for good service integration.