Victorian Auditor-General's Office

3. Measuring output performance

Conclusion

Across all departments and service delivery areas, there are many output performance measures that provide little genuine insight into departmental performance. This is despite the Framework describing output performance measures as the 'building blocks of the accountability system' and the 'basis for the certification of departmental revenue'. This is a significant failure by departments in the application of the state's key performance and accountability framework. Contributing issues include:

2. Measuring outcomes

Conclusion

Departments have not consistently developed or reported on objective indicators that show their achievement against their stated objectives. This means departments are not meeting the Framework's mandatory requirements. More importantly, it weakens departments' accountability and transparency by preventing the government, Parliament and the community from accessing vital information about their performance. Without information on departments' outcome achievement, the government lacks a sound basis for future investment and policy decisions.

1. Audit context

Departments measure and report on their service performance to show what they have delivered with public money. This information helps the government to allocate funding, and Parliament and the community to understand if departments are delivering efficient and effective services. 

DTF sets performance reporting requirements for departments. Each year, departments provide details of their objectives and associated performance measures, targets and results in the state's Budget papers. Departments also publicly report on their performance in their annual reports. 

Government Advertising

In 2019–20, the Victorian government spent $73 million on campaign advertising. Every year, government departments must report on any campaigns they have run, for which they spent over $100,000 on purchasing media placements. 

Our dashboard brings together this information for all government departments and the five government agencies that spent the most on campaign advertising for 2017–18, 2018–19, 2019–20 and 2020–21. It allows you to compare spending across departments and agencies, and conduct your own analysis.

Responses to Performance Audit Recommendations 2015–16 to 2017–18

In our first Assurance Review, we looked at how public entities monitored and responded to performance audit recommendations made by VAGO between 2015-16 and 2017-18.

Nothing has come to our attention to indicate that overall, agencies are not effectively implementing past performance audit recommendations.

Most agencies report having governance arrangements that allow their senior management and audit committees to monitor progress in implementing our audit recommendations.

Results of 2019 Audits: Universities

In Victoria, there are eight public universities, which control a further 48 entities that we are required to audit. Each year, we conduct the financial audits of these 56 entities.

This data dashboard data summarises the financial statement data for all Victorian universities.

Data dashboard

We have developed a data dashboard that summarises the financial statement data for all Victorian universities.

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