PGPA Newsletter 70

A new Flipchart of PGPA Act Commonwealth entities and companies was issued on 16 July 2021.

The Flipchart has been updated to reflect the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility moving from the Industry, Science, Energy and Resources portfolio to Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications on 2 July 2021.

Further detail on this update is available in the Table of Changes for 2020-21. The latest version of the Flipchart and its associated List of Commonwealth entities and companies can be found here on the Finance website. 

Remember to click on the entity or company name within the Flipchart if you need to know more information!

Feedback on the Flipchart and List and how you use these tools are always welcome and can be sent to PGPA@finance.gov.au.

Finance has released a new RMG to assist officials in Commonwealth entities (excluding GBE’s) to responsibly plan, manage and report capital expenditure and non-current asset funding for their entity.

RMG-124 Capital budgeting by Commonwealth entities in the general government sector is available on the Finance website.

The guide provides advice on how entities report capital expenditure in their financial statements, create the third forward estimate year for departmental and administered capital budgets, the impact of a shared service agreement on entities’ departmental capital budget funding, the movement and reallocation of capital expenditure process, the capital management plan and the requirement for reporting this.

The 1 July 2021 Australian Government Organisation Register (AGOR) statistical update is now available on the Finance website.

AGOR provides information on the function, composition, origins and other details of Australian Government entities and bodies and is updated on a quarterly basis.

The online searchable version of AGOR is located on Directory.gov.au. The Directory is your guide to the structures, organisations and key people in the Australian Government.

Visit the AGOR webpage on the Finance website for more information.

If you any questions in relation to AGOR please email us at OAR@finance.gov.au. 

The Digital Records Transformation Initiative (the Initiative), led by the Department of Finance, focused on supporting the development of modernised digital records and information capability across Australian Government non-corporate Commonwealth entities.

The DTA applied the Initiative’s Sourcing Strategy Process to approach the open market for an innovative, end user focused records management solution. The Initiative is pleased to confirm that the Approach to Market is now finalised and the DTA has announced its purchase of RecordPoint’s Records365 product.

Features of the solution include:

• The ability to manage information in place, without the need to capture information in a separate solution, enterprise search, and natural language processing.
• Advanced automation techniques that perform classification of records without requiring additional user effort.

A joint ministerial media release “Australian company raises the bar for digital data management”, by the Finance Minister, Senator the Hon. Simon Birmingham, and the Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business, the Hon Stuart Robert MP, is available at https://www.financeminister.gov.au/media-release/2021/06/25/australian-company-raises-bar-digital-data-management.

The Initiative is also pleased to confirm that the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency has also finalised its approach to market. It has contracted with Deloitte to deliver the Records365 product.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has recently piggy-backed on the DTA arrangement. If you are a Commonwealth Entity looking to solve the same records/information management problems, you can access these arrangements by contacting the DTA at corporate.procurement@dta.gov.au.

Thank you to all those who have participated in the Initiative. Positive changes have been observed to the records management environment since the commencement of the Initiative.

In the 2020-21 Budget, the Government announced the Your Future, Your Super package. The legislation enacting these changes has now passed parliament, with the stapling of superannuation fund requirements to come into effect on 1 November 2021.

These changes will affect recruitment, payroll teams and on-boarding processes within your agency.

CSC is holding Stapling information sessions on Thursday, 19 August 2021 designed to help you and your organisation understand and meet your new superannuation obligations. Please see below some of the topics that will be covered:

• Introduction and summary on Stapling
• How these changes affect your agency
• Checking scheme eligibility for new employees
• ATO Stapling tool

Other changes introduced in the Your Future, Your Super package

If you would like to register for a Stapling information session or require any additional information please email employer.service@csc.gov.au or call 1300 338 240.

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 eLearning modules - 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 eLearning 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!

Did you know that remuneration reporting for Other Highly Paid Staff (OHPS) has a threshold that increases based on the Wage Price Index for the June quarter published by the Australian Statistician?

The threshold is reviewed by Finance every year and adjusted using a formula provided in section 4A of the PGPA Rule.  For the 2020-21 reporting year the threshold was increased by $5000 to $230,000.  The remuneration bands above the threshold are not adjusted, they remain static at $25,000 increments.  As the threshold is adjusted upwards in the coming years, the first band will reduce in size until the threshold subsumes the next band, $245,000.   

The threshold is prepopulated for you in the OHPS remuneration reporting template in the Digital Annual Reporting Tool and executive remuneration reporting guidance is updated the reflect the adjusted threshold.

Remuneration reporting bands for Key Management Personnel and Senior Executive remuneration reporting are not adjusted.  This is because there are no thresholds for reporting this remuneration detail.

 For more information refer to RMG-136 and RMG-138 on the Finance website.