Better meet the needs of citizens

Snapshot of activities in 2011:

  • The Department of Finance and Deregulation (Finance) is leading the development of a Business Case which will consider the scope to improve the use and transmission of personal information both within and between Australian Government agencies including a ‘tell us once’ capability. This would enable people, if they choose to, to provide their information to a number of government agencies simultaneously, so that they would not need to repeat the exercise. The Business Case will be presented to government for consideration in the first part of 2012.
  • There has been a high level of activity and support for Standard Business Reporting (SBR) in the business and software community.  SBR provides capabilities which provide a complete business-to-government electronic reporting service.  Recognition of its potential to further reduce the business regulatory burden can be seen in many reports from the Productivity Commission and others, and from enquiries into the Program from various government agencies.  So future directions in SBR’s scope are focused on improving the value of SBR for business. 
  • During 2011, the SBR Board started consideration of the priority areas for expansion to other government sectors that would reduce the business to government reporting burden.  The areas of business to government reporting that were considered by the SBR Board include: superannuation reporting, not-for-profit (NFP) reporting, employer reporting to the Department of Human Services and occupational health and safety/workcover reporting.  The SBR reporting definitions used for financial/payroll business reporting have been recently endorsed as a standard under the National Standards Framework (NSF).  The endorsement of these standardised reporting definitions will facilitate broader awareness and re-use of the SBR definitions by other areas of government.  The program is pursuing NSF endorsement of other SBR standards.
  • Under the auspices of the Gov 2.0 Working Group, we have:
    • established an on-line community to provide a forum for public servants to discuss Government 2.0 issues
    • published the Government 2.0 Primer and Guidelines to advise agencies about releasing information and engaging online.
    • increased use of the blogging platform, GovSpace, which now hosts 20 websites and 9 blogs and
    • released data.gov.au in March 2011 which provides access to public sector information in 720 data sets, including contributions from all tiers of government in Australia.

APS reform projects related to meeting the needs of citizens

Simplify Australian Government services for citizens

Develop better ways to deliver services through the community and private sectors

Deliver services in closer partnership with State, Territory and local governments

Reduce unnecessary business regulatory burden

Enable citizens to collaborate with government in policy and service design

Conduct a citizen survey