PROGRESS WITH IMPLEMENTING THE RESPONSE TO THE GORDON INQUIRY

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PROGRESS WITH IMPLEMENTING THE RESPONSE TO THE GORDON INQUIRY

Report No 11 - November 2005

Background

In December 2002, the Government announced an Action Plan in response to the Gordon Inquiry into family violence and child abuse in Aboriginal communities. The Action Plan contained more than 120 initiatives to ‘improve the capacity of government to protect children from abuse’ and was supported by $66.5 million in new funding. Fifteen public sector agencies were given responsibility for implementing these initiatives.

This examination reviewed the effectiveness of reporting and monitoring the progress of implementing the Action Plan and its initiatives.

What the examination found...

The examination found that there are inadequacies in the central reporting and monitoring of the progress of the Action Plan to facilitate effective oversight by Government.

An authoritative account of the progress with implementing initiatives has not been prepared by the Action Plan’s Secretariat, with the result that central monitoring and oversight groups do not have available basic information such as the total number of initiatives, the number implemented and estimates on fi nal expenditure and anticipated completion dates.
Reporting to the public does not acquit all the initiatives and is inconsistent in structure and the type of information reported. Reporting only provides information on a small number of initiatives. As a result, the public has not been informed about the progress of many initiatives nor of the Action Plan overall.
An evaluation framework for assessing whether the Action Plan is making a difference has not been finalised. The target date for delivery of the framework was the end of 2003. This delay is significant because a clear and shared sense of purpose is important during the planning and implementation phases and because the opportunity may have been lost to collect some important baseline data.
In the absence of an authoritative account and appropriate public reporting, we examined a sample of 10 key initiatives and found that:
- seven initiatives have been implemented or substantially progressed on time
- the three remaining initiatives are progressing but are behind schedule. The reasons include coordination across agencies and with Aboriginal communities taking longer than expected, delays in the construction of facilities and in delivering fi nancial assistance.

What the examination recommended...

The Department of Indigenous Affairs (as the agency that became responsible for the Secretariat in April 2005) in conjunction with participating agencies should:

establish reporting of authoritative accounts of the progress of Action Plan initiatives
finalise an evaluation framework.

The effectiveness of collaboration between agencies through the current oversight arrangements and on the ground should be revisited with the objective of expediting implementation of initiatives.

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