CHAPTER 6Promoting good administration

Submissions, reviews and research

Parliamentary committees and submissions

The Acting Ombudsman and staff made a submission and appeared before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee concerning its inquiry into the provisions of the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (2006 Budget Measures) Bill 2006. The Bill, which was not enacted, would have given significant new search and seizure powers to Centrelink officers.

We made a submission to the same committee, and appeared before it, in relation to its inquiry into the provisions of the Crimes Legislation Amendment (National Investigative Powers and Witness Protection) Bill 2006. Our comments related to controlled operations and delayed notification search warrants.

We also made a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services regarding its inquiry into the Exposure Draft of the Corporations Amendment (Insolvency) Bill 2007, and a supplementary submission to the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit inquiry into taxation administration in Australia. We appeared before the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee in relation to its review of the implementation of reforms to Australia’s military justice system. More details about this review are provided in the ’Defence section’ of Chapter 7—Looking at the agencies.

We provided submissions to the Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into legal professional privilege and Commonwealth investigatory bodies, and into its review of the Privacy Act 1988.

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Whistleblowing project

Our office continued its leading role in the national research project, Whistling While They Work: Internal Witness Management in the Australian Public Sector. This three-year collaborative project is the first national study of the management of whistleblowers and other internal witnesses. The project aims to describe and compare organisational experience under varying public interest disclosure regimes across the Australian public sector.

By identifying and promoting current best practice in workplace responses to public interest whistleblowing, the project will use the experiences and perceptions of internal witnesses and first and second level managers to identify more routine strategies for preventing, reducing and addressing reprisals and other whistleblowing-related conflicts.

‘The project aims to describe and compare organisational experience under varying public interest disclosure regimes ...’

During 2006–07 the project conducted three major surveys. The first survey involved the distribution of a questionnaire ‘Workplace Experiences and Relationships’ to approximately 23,000 randomly selected employees across 117 Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australian public sector agencies. Over 7,600 responses were received, providing the project with a comprehensive dataset.

The second survey covered 15 public sector ‘case study’ agencies, including four Australian Government agencies. This phase involved distributing a questionnaire to employees who had volunteered (on a confidential basis) to describe their experiences of providing information about alleged or suspected wrongdoings in their workplaces. It was followed by the distribution of questionnaires to employees within the agencies, who were either specifically selected on the basis that their work role may have involved them dealing with the internal reporting of wrongdoing, or randomly selected because of their managerial responsibilities.

The third survey was directed at 27 ‘integrity agencies’ across the four jurisdictions. The term ‘integrity agency’ is used here to describe agencies that have an independent or whole-of-government responsibility to ensure and promote public integrity in their jurisdiction, with direct reference to public sector whistleblowing. This survey covered agency practices and procedures for receiving, investigating and managing reports from public sector employees about wrongdoing in the sector, and the experience of individual staff members dealing with issues and cases involving public sector employees who had reported wrongdoing.

Some data collection is continuing, and it is expected the data analysis and reporting will continue into 2008.

In addition, in November 2006 an issues paper, Public Interest Disclosure Legislation in Australia: Towards the Next Generation, written by the project’s leader, Dr AJ Brown, from Griffith University, was released. A joint foreword to the paper by the Commonwealth, New South Wales and Queensland Ombudsmen drew attention to the importance of developing a national and coherent approach to the design of whistleblower protection laws. The paper is available on our website at www.ombudsman.gov.au.

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Automated assistance in administrative decision making

Australian Government agencies are turning increasingly to computer systems to automate or assist in the administration of programs. Automated systems that are properly constructed and implemented have the potential to improve the efficiency, accuracy and consistency of many government administration processes.

Our office, together with the Australian Government Information Management Office, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and the Privacy Commissioner, was involved in the publication of the Automated Assistance in Administrative Decision-making Better Practice Guide. The guide was jointly launched in April 2007 by the Ombudsman and the Secretary of the Department of Finance and Administration, Dr Ian Watt.

The guide was developed by the AAADM Working Group, which involved sixteen Australian Government agencies. The Ombudsman was pleased to see the cooperative approach taken in the development of the guide, with a wide range of agencies making a significant contribution to the content.

The guide aims to assist public officials understand how key administrative law and public administration principles apply to automated systems that are used to assist with administrative decision making. Transparency and accountability are particularly important in this regard, and are key components of the better practice guide. The guide includes the following key principles.

• The underlying rules contained in the automated system should accurately capture the relevant legislative and policy provisions as well as the relevant procedures.
  
  
• Matters of judgement or discretion should be carefully considered to ensure that there is no inappropriate restrictive modelling in the automated rule base, and that discretionary decisions are capable of scrutiny and review.
  
  
• The underlying rules of automated systems should be readily understandable and publicly available.
  
  
• Automated systems should have the capability to automatically generate an audit trail of the decision-making path. This capability should also be able to generate statements of reasons or notification letters, and be available for external scrutiny.

‘... to assist public officials understand how key administrative law and public administration principles apply to automated systems ...’

Maintaining these principles benefits individuals who are affected by administrative decisions that may have been automated or assisted by automation. Adherence to these principles also enables external review agencies like the Ombudsman to investigate such administrative decisions more easily.