In Victoria's devolved financial accountability system, responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of data rests with the board or accountable officer of each entity, and is certified through the entity's governance process, rather than by DPC or DTF.

This part of the report discusses the results of our testing of the data reported on the ICT Dashboard by the agencies involved in this audit.

The ICT Dashboard launched in March 2016 and, since then, there have been eight quarters of data reported. From the potential 184 FMA agencies required to report on the ICT Dashboard, 84 have reported 439 ICT projects.

The ICT Reporting Standard requires applicable agencies to report data on the ICT Dashboard for projects worth over $1 million. The ICT Reporting Standard's key objectives are to:

1.1 Background

ICT is integral to how governments manage information and deliver programs and services.

Our April 2015 Digital Dashboard Phase 1 report found that, in general, government agencies' financial and management processes did not enable the comprehensive reporting of actual ICT expenditure across the public sector. During that audit, many agencies found it difficult to provide basic information on their ICT spend and projects.

Information and communications technology (ICT) is integral to how governments manage information and deliver programs and services. ICT projects need to be diligently monitored and successfully implemented, so that services to the government, public sector and community can be efficient and effective.

Comprehensive reporting on ICT expenditure and projects is important to improve transparency and provide assurance that public sector agencies have used public resources in an efficient, effective and economic way.

The Victorian Auditor-General’s Annual Plan 2018–19 was prepared pursuant to the requirements of section 7A of the Audit Act 1994, and tabled in the Victorian Parliament on 6 June 2018.

The Auditor-General undertakes financial report audits for over 550 public sector entities each year. Around a third of these are undertaken solely using VAGO staff. The remainder are undertaken with the assistance of private sector firms—audit service providers—contracted by the Auditor-General. We review this work, and all audit opinions are issued on behalf of the Auditor-General.

Our performance audits are typically delivered by in-house staff specially trained by us, however, we periodically engage experts to advise our performance audit teams on complex and technical issues. We also use contractors to supplement our staff resources where required.