PGPA Newsletter 69

The Finance guidance on reporting of executive remuneration information in annual reports, RMGs 138 and 139, have been refreshed and are available on the Finance website via the below links.

• RMG 138 - Commonwealth entities' executive remuneration reporting guide for annual reports
• RMG 139 - Commonwealth companies' executive remuneration reporting guide for annual reports

The guidance has been streamlined with a digital first approach in mind, using plain English to make the guidance simple and engaging in a web based format, along with updates to the threshold for this reporting period.

The RMGs provide tips on how to enter remuneration information in the Transparency Portal so that all executive remuneration is reported consistently using the Digital Annual Reporting Tool. For access to the Digital Reporting Tool, annual report coordinators should email digitalannualreportproject@finance.gov.au. 

If you have any feedback on our RMGs or need further information in relation to the data template changes, please contact us at PGPA@finance.gov.au.

Technical accounting policy and guidance RMGs 111, 113 and 122 have been updated and are available on the Finance website via the below links:

• RMG 111 – Accounting for non-current assets held for sale
• RMG 113 – Accounting for subsequent expenditure on property, plant and equipment
• RMG 122 – Disclosure of current and non-current assets and liabilities in financial statements (formerly Disclosure of maturity information in financial statements)

Content changes in the RMGs are outlined below:

• RMG 111
  • This guide has been revised to provide information in relation to accounting for NCAs that are held for sale, in accordance with the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) accounting standard, AASB 5 Non-current Assets Held for Sale and Discontinued Operations (AASB 5) and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Financial Reporting) Rule 2015.

• RMG 113
  • This guide has been revised to provide information for Commonwealth entity officials with responsibility for subsequent expenditure on items of property, plant and equipment (PPE), as defined by the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) Accounting Standard, AASB 116 Property, Plant and Equipment (AASB 116).

• RMG 122
  • This guide has been revised to provide information for Commonwealth entity officials with responsibility for preparing financial statements under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Financial Reporting) Rule 2015 (FRR).
    • The guide provides guidance for the disclosure of maturity information in financial statements, as required under section 34B of the FRR and Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) Accounting Standard, AASB 101 Presentation of Financial Statements (AASB 101), and
    • Provides illustrative examples for breaking-down total assets and liabilities for maturity information disclosures.

Digital First

Version 3.0 of MasterDocs has been rolled out to all instances of the Digital Annual Reporting Tool (DART). Among the many exciting features of Version 3.0 is a new workflow system, which provides an improved end-to-end experience to those entities taking a Digital First approach, facilitating quicker, simpler and more intuitive approvals.

Digital First is an approach that involves the use of the DART for all drafting, workflow, and approvals required to complete an annual report. It enables entities to reduce the process effort involved to generate their Annual Report and provides entities with a cost efficient, accurate and real time means to author and publish. It enables a single source of truth for content, and minimises version control errors – all content, and audit logs of approvals are in the one place. A Digital First approach does not restrict entities post production work such as adding infographics.

Additionally, the DART contains a collection of templates for standard data sets that must be completed for the entity’s annual report. The non-financial data templates reflect mandatory data requirements as set out by the PGPA Rule (supported RMGs 135, 136 and 137) and are designed to assist entities to meet their reporting requirements. The Digital First approach can be used to help your entity meet many of the mandatory PGPA requirements. As the data templates contain all of the mandatory requirements, by completing the templates FIRST, they can then be copied into the relevant section of the body of your report to reduce double handling.

We encourage entities to engage in a Digital First approach for coordinating their 2020-21 annual report by using the DART to its full extent. The full potential is not just in saving time producing documents or HTML, but in managing the authoring and clearance process in one place.

If you are interested in maximising the use of the DART, or you or your team are new to the DART, please take up the opportunity to book into an onboarding session with the MasterDocs team at support@masterdocs.com.au.

Community of Practice

The Digital Annual Reporting team’s second Community of Practice (CoP) event was held on 11 June. Its focus was on maximising the use of the DART by using a Digital First approach. This event was recorded and is available for viewing on the CoP channel in the Digital Annual Reports GovTEAMs community. The CoP channel was established to allow annual report coordinators to share their experiences with the broader annual reporting community and post process questions for answering by their annual reporting peers as well as by MasterDocs and the Digital Annual Reporting team.

Please sign up directly to the Digital Annual Reports community in GovTEAMs, or for support, email digitalannualreportproject@finance.gov.au.

Working Group

The Government recently committed to the further development of the DART and has provided ongoing funding to improve and maintain the tool.  In this context, the Digital Annual Reporting team are currently seeking nominations for membership to the DART Working Group. The DART Working Group is being established to support and guide the future development of the DART, and will benefit from having representatives from various sizes and types of entities/companies within the annual reporting community.

Members of the DART Working Group will be responsible for:

• provision of subject matter expertise and guidance;
• provision of input into the strategic goals and actions;
• participation in and engagement with User Acceptance Testing for improvements and enhancements of the DART;
• reporting on the progress of areas of responsibility to the Group as agreed.

To date, we have had a great response from non-corporate Commonwealth entities, so we are now particularly interested in seeking more representation from corporate Commonwealth entities and Commonwealth companies. To nominate yourself to be a member of the DART Working Group, please email the digitalannualreportproject@finance.gov.au.

Thank you for your interest in structure.gov.au

The Finance Knowledge Graph Team would like to thank everyone who has used https://structure.gov.au – especially those who have provided feedback following our request in the last Newsletter (No.68). The team greatly values the ideas and opinions of our website users and looks forward to receiving more as new features are added to the site. If you haven’t had an opportunity to visit the site and share your views, we encourage you to please do.

New performance expectations of regulators come into effect 1 July 2021 with the launch of the Government’s new Regulator Performance Guide, now available on the Deregulation Agenda website.

The Guide is a foundational part of the Government’s program of work to increase accountability, promote best practice, build the professionalism of regulators and support cultural change. It takes effect from 1 July 2021 and replaces the 2014 Regulator Performance Framework.

The Guide sets out the Government’s expectations of regulator performance via three principles of best practice:

• continuous improvement and building trust
• risk based and data driven
• collaboration and engagement.

It also provides guidance to assist Commonwealth regulators to report on their performance against these expectations. This includes changes to streamline reporting requirements. From 1 July 2021, entities with regulatory functions will no longer be required to produce a standalone performance report as per the 2014 Regulator Performance Framework. Instead, regulator performance reporting should be incorporated into an entity’s reporting processes as per the PGPA Act and PGPA Rule.

The first year of reporting under these arrangements is considered a transitional year. Entities may use the transitional year to decide how to most appropriately embed the Guide in undertaking and reporting on performance for their organisation.

Further information to support entities in the transition, including best practice case studies, is available in the Library of best practice. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of Finance will work closely with regulators over the next twelve months to support them in implementing the arrangements.

The Government consulted publicly on the draft Guide from 20 April to 21 May 2021. Public submissions on the draft Guide have been published on the Deregulation Agenda website. 

Contact: Further questions can be sent to the Department of Finance at PGPA@finance.gov.au and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet at Deregulation@pmc.gov.au.

In response to the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic, Comcover has adapted its face-to-face risk workshops to also be accessible virtually online. For 2021, we have decided to keep this approach and take on a blended learning environment of both face-to-face and virtual workshops. Face-to-face workshops will be held in Galambany Conference Centre at Department of Finance (1 Canberra Avenue, Forrest, ACT, 2600) and our virtual workshops are available on GovTeams.

Currently, we have three workshops across four different pathways available for free to all APS employees.

• Foundation Pathway: consists of two eLearn module’s - Introduction to Risk and Introduction to Comcover provides an understanding basic risk management concepts and how risk is managed in the Commonwealth. This pathway is available to all Commonwealth officials, regardless of level or role.
• Generalist Pathway - Practical Risk Management: held over two days face-to-face, or three 90 minute virtual sessions. Practical Risk Management has an eLearn module to complete prior to attending the workshop. The workshop assists you in describing key risk management concepts, explaining and applying the risk management process, and producing a risk assessment and treatment plan.  This pathway is ideal for APS officers whose role requires them to engage with and apply their entity's risk management framework to successfully deliver outcomes.
• Specialist Pathway – Embedding Risk Management: Held over a two day face-to-face workshop, with a six to eight week break between day 1 and day 2, or held over three 90 minute virtual sessions. Embedding Risk Management workshop assists you in designing and developing a risk management framework for your entity, identify risk resources requirements, outlining roles and responsibilities for managing risk, guide the establishment and promotion of positive risk culture, and embed risk management into strategic planning for every day operations. This workshop and pathway is designed for APS officers that are required to design, implement and embed an entity's risk management framework.
• Executive Pathway – SES Professional Development: Held over a half day face-to-face workshop, or two 90 minute virtual sessions. SES Professional development workshop assists participants in recognising key and emerging risk management issues, foster a positive risk culture in their entity and across the Commonwealth. This course and pathway is specifically designed for SES officials

If any of these free workshops sound beneficial to you or anybody within your entity, please register on the Comcover Learning Centre, or email comcover@comcover.com.au, or call

1800 651 540 – option 2. Remember, Risk is everyone’s business!

Please also find below a calendar of all upcoming Comcover workshops, both virtual and face-to-face. We look forward to seeing you attend!

In the 2020/21 Budget, the Government announced the Your Future, Your Super package. This package is designed to ensure the superannuation system delivers better outcomes for customers in four key ways:

• Your super follows you (the concept of ‘stapling’)
• Customers will be empowered more
• Underperforming funds will be held accountable
• An effort to increase accountability and transparency

The legislation enacting these changes has now passed parliament, with the stapling requirements to come into effect on 1 November 2021.

What stapling means

Stapling means new employees may have a super fund ‘stapled’ to them, following them as they change jobs. This has been introduced to stop customers from having multiple super accounts with different funds.

It’s important to know that stapling doesn’t impact existing CSC customers with PSS or CSS accounts. The rules around eligibility for those accounts will remain unchanged, and they can’t be stapled. 

It‘s now more important than ever that your teams confirm eligibility of all new employees using CSC’s Employer Services Online (ESO) portal. You can find further information on eligibility rules here.

How stapling will impact your team

CSC wants to ensure your team is as prepared as possible for this change. Here are some things for you to be aware of:

• Your team must check CSS and PSS eligibility for every new employee before they start employment
• If a new employee isn’t eligible for CSS and PSS, they can nominate a super fund by using the ATO’s superannuation standard choice form
• If a new employee doesn’t nominate a super fund when they start their new job, your team will be required to pay their super contributions to their stapled fund
• To find out a new employee’s stapled fund, your team will need to check the ATO’s online services. We expect that the ATO will soon release more information about how to do this
• If a new employee doesn’t have a stapled super fund and doesn’t nominate a fund, you’ll need to pay their super contributions into your nominated default super fund

These changes are likely to mean a change in your recruitment, on-boarding and/or payroll team processes for new employees, especially if you engage a shared service provider.

CSC is ready to help

As your trusted superannuation partner CSC is ready to support you through this change to ensure you continue to meet your super obligations.

They will be holding online seminars and workshops to support you through the change. Keep an eye out for an invite, or contact your CSC Employer Relationship Manager for more information.

They’ve also designed a New Employees training pack that’s ready to be delivered to your teams once stapling comes into effect. In addition to that, they’re adding new web content to their website and are updating the wording in ESO’s eligibility determiner. They’re happy to help you through any internal process changes required to accommodate stapling.

If you want more information, reach out to your CSC Employer Relationship Manager, the CSC Employer Service Desk on 1300 338 240, or email employer.service@csc.gov.au.

Did you know that links to the PGPA Rule on the Finance webpage take users to the compilation series? By linking to the series, we ensure that users are always looking at the most up to date version of the Rule and are aware of amendments that have been made. A digital first approach guarantees users will never miss any amendments!