Building Better Governance

Part Three—Departmental Case Studies

Department of Transport and Regional Services

How a department communicates information to strengthen and consolidate its governance structure and processes, assisted by strong leadership and the establishment of a unit with specific responsibility for managing governance issues.

The department

The Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS) is at the centre of the Government’s agenda for Australian transport and regional issues. It supports the Government in fostering an efficient, sustainable and competitive, safe and secure transport system, as well as assisting regions to manage their own futures.

DOTARS has a workforce of approximately 1 300 with employees located in the central office in Canberra as well as offices in the regions, states and territories.

The challenge

Prior to 2005, governance functions were located in corporate areas throughout the department. Following a review of these arrangements, the Secretary established a separate unit, the Governance Centre, reporting directly to him. The Governance Centre was given responsibility for improving accountability, decision making and other business processes.

The Centre was created in response to various highly-publicised examples of poor governance in private and public sector organisations in Australia and elsewhere. The Secretary wanted to ensure that the department was appropriately directed, controlled and accountable; demonstrating performance against planned objectives; and conforming to legislative requirements.

The key initial challenge for the Governance Centre has been to engender ongoing awareness of the need for appropriate governance arrangements throughout the department through regular communication with all staff. The centre also provides advice, systems and support to assist all staff in ensuring governance principles and policies are applied.

The system

To achieve greater awareness of governance, the centre developed a communication strategy to strengthen staff knowledge and understanding of these issues and to highlight how failures in governance systems can adversely affect organisations.

The communication strategy included a number of innovative and creative ideas for attracting the attention of staff, as well as using already established departmental communication tools.

What was done

The Governance Centre has a separate link on the department’s intranet site, and uses this extensively to communicate and make information accessible to staff, as well as providing links to other important websites.

A quarterly newsletter, called Governance Matters, is also made available on the intranet and produced in small numbers in coloured hard copy for limited distribution to each division’s executive area. This is also provided to all new DOTARS employees during presentations by the Governance Centre to induction courses.

The newsletter contains general information about internal and APS governance issues, as well as a front page feature article on a matter of particular or timely importance. For example, the April 2007 issue dealt with the financial management and accountability framework Certificate of Compliance. On publication day, the intranet displays a news item about the publication of the newsletter. This generally prompts considerable contact from employees regarding the content of articles, indicating a positive staff perception of the newsletter’s quality and usefulness.

The department has a series of internally-developed screensavers and the Governance Centre has created a number of attention-seeking, creative examples which flash governance messages for around 30 seconds at a time. Focussing on areas of risk (for example delegation or certification issues), they engage staff by posing questions to employees about whether they are fulfilling their legislative responsibilities and exercising their delegated powers appropriately. They also set out scenarios that employees may deal with from time-to-time, thus requiring at least some attention to the issues.

Another means of communicating information about governance is the ‘desk drop’. This is a short, half page, brightly coloured sheet of information on governance issues dropped on the desks of all staff. The desk drop was created to vary the communication style, since most other information provided by the Centre is available in electronic form.

The first desk drop covered the important issue of delegations. As part of its process of continuous improvement, the Governance Centre sought to remind staff of the significant risk to the department posed by making decisions and taking actions without the appropriate authority. This was also considered an important issue due to the attention that the Department of Finance and Administration is giving to compliance with the Government’s financial management and accountability framework.

Further support for departmental employees in terms of decision making and accountability issues has been enhanced through the introduction of a delegations management system called ‘i-Delegate’. This system makes accessing information about the powers and the level of authority employees have under law and other Government policies much quicker, easier and simpler, leading to a more robust process.

The Governance Centre also provides secretariat support, and develops the draft agenda, for a range of high level governance committees, including the department’s Audit Committee and the Executive Management Team (a weekly meeting of the department’s executive to discuss the week’s priorities). Of particular note, the SES Management Team, which meets monthly, provides a forum for all SES employees to participate in organisational management discussions and provide feedback to the executive on key governance issues. Governance is a standing item on the agenda each month.

The SES Management Team meeting offers the Governance Centre an excellent opportunity to present governance information to senior management, and to raise the profile of the Centre and its issues. External speakers (for example from the Australian Public Service Commission or Department of Finance and Administration) are also invited to speak at SES Management Team meetings.

A Catalogue of Governance Committees provides the terms of reference, objectives and operational details of the range of governance committees including, among others, the People Management Committee and the Strategic Information Technology Committee. The catalogue is available to all staff on the Governance Centre’s intranet pages and helps to raise awareness about decision making and consultative processes in the department.

Monitoring

The centre has not yet undertaken formal monitoring of the success of its communication strategies, but it receives ongoing positive feedback from employees and management.

Benefits

The high profile that the Governance Centre has developed since its inception has brought governance issues to the attention of departmental employees, and created a much greater understanding by employees of their responsibilities as departmental and APS employees.

The establishment of the centre has focused departmental resources and interest on governance and created an area with clear responsibility for driving cultural change.

Key messages

Creative, innovative and accurate methods of communication within departments are vital for effective application of governance principles, and also assist in staff acceptance and understanding of such issues.
Support from the Secretary for communication of governance matters raises the profile of the issues and acceptance within the organisation.
Wide dissemination of, and easy access to, information about the department’s governance processes and committees structure assists employees’ understanding of their responsibilities and avenues for decision making.

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