By Angela Dorizas
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) today released its review of the Federal Government’s Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program (RLCIP).
The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government introduced the RLCIP in late 2008 to stimulate the local economy in the wake of the global financial crisis.
The purpose of the audit was to assess the design and administration of the Strategic Projects component of the infrastructure program.
Among the many findings, the ANAO reported there were higher approval rates for projects in Labor held electorates compared to those in Coalition held seats. However, it said the proportion of total funding awarded on an electorate basis was consisitent with political representation in Federal Parliament.
The ANAO also found that the eligibility and compliance checking process developed by the Department was abandoned part-way through its implementation and was not replaced with an alternative system.
“As a consequence, rather than ineligible and incomplete applications being excluded from further consideration, all applications received were considered as to whether they should be shortlisted to undergo a risk assessment by the department,” the report said.
The audit also found that there was no clear communication of the assessment criteria for Strategic Projects applications.
“A further shortcoming in the administration of the Strategic Projects component was that no version of the program guidelines outlined the assessment criteria that would be used to select the successful application,” it said.
“This was notwithstanding that the House Standing Committee had recommended in its November 2008 Interim Report that key assessment criteria should be defined ‘in the clearest possible way’ and that the department should ensure that ‘applications and departmental staff are aware of these criteria’.”
The ANAO recommended that the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government “improve the effectiveness of its risk management practices in assessing applications to grant programs by clearly discriminating between those risks that should be addressed before the application is considered for approval”.
It also recommended that in the design of future grants programs, the department “develop for ministerial consideration clearly defined selection criteria that will be published in the program guidelines and applied in the assessment of grant applications; and give more consistent support to achievement or key program objectives”.
The final recommendation was that the Department “identify opportunities in future grant programs to tie payments to proponents more closely to the cash flow needs of approved projects”.
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