Welcome to the Commonwealth Financial Accountability Review (CFAR) blog
By Stein Helgeby
Welcome to the CFAR blog.
We originally launched the CFAR blog for the Department of Finance and Deregulation (Finance) Discussion Paper, Is Less More? Towards Better Commonwealth Performance. Our goal in setting up the blog was to enable consultation with the community and stakeholders on the discussion paper.
The blog has proven to be a great base for CFAR communications and engagement. Following the success of the blogging platform to date, we have expanded our site to include the Position Paper, Sharpening the Focus, A Framework for Improving Commonwealth Performance.
The Position Paper was released by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation on 23 November2012.
We are seeking your views on the positions outlined in the paper.
We are also interested in your views on how we can make this blog an effective mechanism for participation and consultation.
We look forward to reading your comments.
Introduction
The Minister for Finance and Deregulation announced the Commonwealth Financial Accountability Review (CFAR) on 8 December 2010. CFAR forms an important part of the Australian Government’s Better Government agenda. This agenda is concerned with ensuring that there is an appropriate framework within which the government and the public sector can work effectively, irrespective of particular settings or policy priorities. It covers a range of activities to improve delivery of government policies and programs and upgrade the public management framework generally.
The objective of CFAR is to improve performance, accountability and risk management across government, through a framework that is simple, easy to use and valued by all stakeholders.
CFAR is examining the Australian Government’s current financial framework – including funding arrangements, governance, performance and accountability – from first principles, to identify options for reform that will support high quality resource management and performance now, and into the future.
While the government and the Australian Public Service assess performance and management structures on an ongoing basis it is rare that an opportunity, such as CFAR, comes along to fundamentally reconsider the financial framework. The last such review occurred in the early 1990s and culminated with the commencement of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997.
I have only just become aware of your position paper – which closed for comment yesterday. I would like to be included in future correspondence.
Just to introduce myself I have 22 years’ experience in Government and a risk focused PhD on a whole of government study. The focus of my interest and experience would be to address and integrate best practise standards and management theory (Circuits of Power) both of which were included in my PhD.