Chief Minister Andrew Barr: “Only one party in the government does make it easier to manage machinery of government changes, but they’re still complicated.” Photo: Michelle Kroll.
The ACT Public Service restructure, which will start on 1 July, is a bid to free up sclerotic services and prepare for the coming challenges in housing, infrastructure, IT, the NDIS and health.
The restructure will involve directorate mergers, function transfers and the creation of the new Digital Canberra directorate to centralise management of the growing amount of IT work to deliver more services online.
Mr Barr said the changes reflected the government’s priorities this term, which differ markedly from those of the previous coalition government with the Greens.
Indeed, he indicated that Labor governing on its own gave it a freer hand.
“Only one party in the government does make it easier to manage machinery of government changes, but they’re still complicated,” Mr Barr said.
He said the policy agenda locally and nationally had moved on, so the changes were designed to free up resources to focus on Labor’s 2024 election commitments.
“They’re also designed to get ahead of known challenges that are coming down the pipeline in federal financial relations and service delivery as it relates to NDIS reform and new national healthcare agreements,” Mr Barr said.
Mr Barr said digitisation of government services would only be increasing and the ACT’s experience so far pointed to a need for greater control over ICT projects that are not only costly but prone to unforeseen issues, citing the costly Human Resources Information Management System write-off and the troubled implementation of the MyWay+ ticketing system.
This involved responding to the Auditor-General’s recommendations and consolidating capability.
“The model that we’re looking to replicate has been the journey for Major Projects Canberra, which started initially with a small number of projects and then, as capability and capacity have grown, it’s become Infrastructure Canberra and taken on a greater level of responsibility,” Mr Barr said.
“That’s the journey that I think we will be on with Digital Canberra, but rightly we want to review how it’s gone after the first couple of years before making a decision to either permanently continue it and or expand its remit.”
Mr Barr said governments everywhere were grappling with the inherent risks of IT projects that involve services for hundreds of thousands of people.
The goal was to design new projects well, procure them well, and then have a good implementation plan.
Canberra Hospital. A new five-year health agreement with the Commonwealth is one reason for a reorganisation of health and community services. Photo: James Coleman.
Mr Barr also acknowledged that there were areas of government with slow response times, overlapping responsibilities and disjointed approaches.
“We’re just not coordinating well enough across government in different areas,” Mr Barr said. “Not providing quick enough turnaround time on, for example, development assessments.”
The merging of the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate (EPSDD) and Transport Canberra & City Services (TCCS) into a City and Environment Directorate and reorganisation of functions is a direct response to long-time complaints from the property industry about slow approval times and the complications of entity referrals relating to utilities, traffic, trees, heritage and the environment.
The new Development Solutions unit aims to remedy these issues and create a more streamlined service.
“We recognised that to deliver the housing supply targets, we needed to make changes to the development assessment process, particularly as it related to the referral entity,” Mr Barr said.
He said the new unit would have an executive manager, an SES position that was accountable for both time frames and for making a final collective determination to then allow the Planning Authority and Chief Planner to decide on development applications.
“What we’re endeavouring to do here does address legitimate issues that have been raised whilst still maintaining an appropriate level of independent assessment and ensuring that all of the things that need to be considered in a development approval or a development assessment are considered, but let’s streamline the administrative process so that there’s not endless back and forth,” Mr Barr said.
He said there was very strong rationale for the amalgamation of health and community services due to the NDIS reforms and a new five-year health agreement requiring policy and intergovernmental relations capability.
The community sector was also calling for more of a one-stop shop for dealing with government to stop duplication.
“There are many community sector organisations who have two separate contracts, two different contract managers and different approaches between health and community services,” Mr Barr said.
“So there is a desire here to streamline that process and for the new directorate to be able to engage more holistically with the community sector.”
