Responses to Performance Engagement Recommendations: Annual Status Update 2024

This review

We conduct performance engagements to assess if Victorian public sector agencies and their programs and services are operating effectively, economically, efficiently and in compliance with relevant Acts.

Our performance engagements include findings and recommendations to agencies about how they can improve their performance.

We give agencies the opportunity to respond to our recommendations before we table our reports, and we include their responses in our reports. 

Agencies may accept each recommendation in full, in part, in principle or not at all. They may also state the actions they will take to address each recommendation and give a target date for completing them.

We conduct this review each year to ask agencies if they have progressed in completing the recommendations.

Follow-up on
unresolved
recommendations

During this review, we followed up on unresolved recommendations. We asked agencies for updates on:

• their acceptance of the recommendation
• what actions they have taken in response to the recommendation
• if the recommendation is now complete
• when they completed the recommendation or their updated target date for completion.

This section summarises the recommendation updates agencies have given us. 

For full detail on specific recommendations, see Appendix E or the accompanying dashboard published on our website.

Why this is important

We make recommendations to public sector agencies about their programs and services. We aim to help agencies address the root causes of poor performance.

Our recommendations, like the public sector, encompass a broad range of agencies and services. We tabled 94 reports between July 2018 and June 2023 that made 1,645 recommendations to 108 agencies. Government departments received just over half (55 per cent) of the recommendations, followed by local government, which received 27 per cent of the recommendations.

As there are no legislative requirements for agencies to accept, implement or publicly report on actions they have taken, this review provides an update to the public and parliamentarians. It may help them to hold agencies more accountable for how they implement our recommendations.

Further information

For more information about the scope of this review and our methods, please see Appendix C. 

Consultation with agencies

When reaching our conclusions, we consulted with the reviewed agencies and considered their views. You can read their full responses in Appendix A.

Acceptance status

Before tabling a report, we ask audited agencies if they accept our recommendations. In this review, we asked agencies again so that we could see if there were any changes.

Of the 1,645 recommendations we made in our reports between July 2018 and June 2023, agencies accepted 1,583 (96 per cent) at time of tabling. At the time of this review, agencies told us that they still accepted 1,577 (96 per cent) (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Acceptance of recommendations at the time of this review

Source: VAGO.

As shown in Figure 3 below, most agencies still accepted the recommendations at the time of this review as they did at tabling. 

Agencies may change the acceptance status to ‘no’ or ‘not applicable’. Common reasons agencies gave for changing their acceptance status included:

• the recommendations are no longer relevant (circumstances may have changed or other work is underway that makes the recommendation no longer relevant)
• the agencies do not have the resources (time or budget) to implement the recommendations.

Figure 3: Number of recommendations accepted at the time of tabling and at the time of this review

Note: Agencies accepted more recommendations from 2020–21 at this review compared to at tabling. This was because agencies did not initially specify their acceptance status for some recommendations, but later accepted these recommendations at the time of review.
Source: VAGO.

Completion of accepted recommendations

We classify recommendations as complete when agencies attest to us that they have established processes to make sure that the recommended action is ongoing. 

Agencies attested:

• they had completed 1,340 (85 per cent) of the 1,577 accepted recommendations
• 237 (15 per cent) of the 1,577 accepted recommendations were unresolved. 

We categorise unresolved recommendations as either ‘in progress’ or ‘not started’.

Agencies reported 227 unresolved recommendations were in progress, while 10 were not started. 

Figure 4: Status of accepted recommendations by tabled year

Source: VAGO.

Completion by type of agency

We looked at the completion of accepted recommendations by type of agency. Figure 5 shows the percentage and breakdown of accepted recommendations at each stage.

We categorised agencies by type:

• department
• council
• health service
• TAFE/university
• water authority
• others (for example, Victorian Planning Authority, Victoria Police and Parks Victoria).

TAFEs/universities and water authorities reported they had completed all the recommendations we made between July 2018 and June 2023. Departments, councils, other agencies and health services reported they had recommendations that are ‘in progress’ or ‘not started’.

Figure 5: Status of accepted recommendations by type of agency

Source: VAGO.

Completion by department

Of the 1,645 recommendations we made between July 2018 and June 2023, 903 (55 per cent) were to government departments.

Government departments accepted 862 (96 per cent) of these recommendations. They have completed 713 (83 per cent) of the recommendations they accepted. Figure 6 shows the status of accepted recommendations by department.

Figure 6: Status of accepted recommendations by department 

Note 1: Acronyms used are for the Department of Government Services (DGS), Department of Justice and Community Safety (DJCS), Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC), Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions (DJSIR), Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF), Department of Education (DE), Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH), Department of Health (DH), Department of Transport and Planning (DTP), Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA).
Note 2: Department of Government Services (DGS) was established on 1 January 2023.
Source: VAGO.

Importance of timely completion of recommendations

Our recommendations aim to address the root causes of poor performance. When agencies complete our recommendations, they help address the issues identified in our performance engagements. 

When we table our performance engagement reports in Parliament, agencies can set target completion dates for the recommendations they accept. They may also revise their target completion dates as many times as needed. 

While some recommendations are more complex than others, agencies should seek to complete recommendations:

• in a timely manner
• in accordance with their own target completion dates.

Overall time of completion

Agencies took a median of 13 months to complete recommendations tabled between July 2018 and June 2023.

The time taken to complete these recommendations varied from zero to 63 months.

Departments’ completion times

Departments took a median of 13 months to complete their recommendations.

Specifically, we found: 

• DGS had the longest median completion time at 22 months. However, it is important to note that DGS was established on 1 January 2023. Recommendations to DGS were transferred from other departments after functions and responsibilities were reallocated.
• DPC had the second-longest median completion time at 19 months.
• DTF had the shortest median completion time at 10 months.
• DEECA completed the highest number of recommendations (130) at a median of 13 months.

Figure 7: Recommendations completed by departments against median completion times 

Note: Recommendations to DGS were transferred from other departments after DGS was established in 2023. Two of these recommendations were completed before they were transferred.
Source: VAGO.

Initial target completion dates

Agencies may set target completion dates for recommendations before a performance engagement tables in Parliament. Of the 1,577 accepted recommendations made between July 2018 and June 2023, 1,333 had an initial target date (85 per cent). The median target date agencies set was 7 months after tabling.

Agencies completed 436 (33 per cent) of the recommendations by the initial target date. Agencies completed 679 recommendations (51 per cent) after the initial target date. 

The maximum delay from the initial target date was 49 months.

Revised target completion dates

During our annual review, we ask agencies if they have changed their target completion date for a recommendation.

Of the 1,333 accepted recommendations with an initial target completion date, agencies changed that date for 556 recommendations (42 per cent) by a median of 14 months. Of these, 90 per cent were further extended. 

Of the 556 recommendations with changed dates, 324 have been reported as ‘completed’.

The median revised target date set by agencies was 25 months after tabling.

Not meeting revised target dates

Some agencies still did not meet their revised target completion dates despite revising them.

Of the 324 recommendations with revised target dates, agencies completed 135 (42 per cent) later than their revised dates. The length of additional delay was at a median of 61 days, or about 2 months.

Status of unresolved recommendations

There are 237 accepted but unresolved recommendations. 

Agencies set initial target completion dates for 218 of these unresolved recommendations. As at 31 December 2023, these unresolved recommendations were a median of 6 months behind their initial target dates. 

Agencies have set revised target dates for 179 of these unresolved recommendations. The length of delay from their initial to revised target dates was at a median of 21 months.

Older recommendations

We requested updates on 23 unresolved recommendations made before July 2018. 

Of these, 15 remain unresolved after this review. These relate to 7 agencies across 5 engagements. 

These older recommendations have been tabled for a median of 69 months (over 5 years). 

We urge the relevant agencies to resolve these recommendations. This will address the risks we found and make necessary improvements.

Figure 8: Audits made before July 2018 with unresolved recommendations (in order of tabling date)

Source: VAGO.