Conclusion

Neither DPC nor DELWP developed a full business case for the program. This meant that government lacked sound and comprehensive information to consider the merits of the program.

Program planning was deficient in as much as it failed to fully appreciate and effectively mitigate obvious risks of excess demand, market reliance and grid capacity. 

Despite its size and complexity, only limited implementation planning had been undertaken when the program started in August 2018. 

Households are increasingly moving to renewable energy technologies. Solar industry products, particularly solar PV panels, are one of the most popular renewable energy sources.

According to the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Regulator, there were over 509 000 installed solar PV panels in Victoria as at December 2020.

The Victorian Government’s Solar Homes Program provides incentives for households to switch to solar energy through rebated solar PV panels, batteries and hot-water systems. 

Figure C1 lists the adjustments we have made to our performance audit work program in response to the impact of the COVID–19 pandemic.

FIGURE C1: Audit adjustments in response to COVID–19

The Auditor-General undertakes financial audits for over 560 public sector entities each year. The Auditor-General uses VAGO staff to undertake around a third of these financial report audits. For the remaining audits, the Auditor-General contracts private sector firms (audit service providers) to assist. VAGO reviews this work and all audit opinions are issued on behalf of the Auditor-General. 

We largely use our own professionally qualified and trained staff to deliver performance audits. However, we also engage experts to advise or work with our performance audit teams on complex and technical issues and use contractors to supplement staff resources where required.

This section sets out our proposed performance audit program for the next three years. In 2021–22, we plan to deliver 18 performance audits. 

For each audit listed, we outline the audit specification, which includes our objective for the audit, the issues we intend to examine and the agencies we expect to include.

As discussed in Section 3.2, most departments' performance statements do not clearly measure their service efficiency and effectiveness. This makes it difficult for them to identify opportunities to improve their operations and demonstrate value for money. We used the Productivity Commission's RoGS to show how departments could restructure their performance information to better monitor their performance over time.