Purposes and outcomes

This section reports on results achieved in 2016–17 against the purposes and performance criteria published in the Department of Finance Corporate Plan 2016–17, the Department of Finance Portfolio Budget Statements 2016–17 and the Department of Finance Portfolio Additional Estimates Statements 2016–17. It also includes Finance’s priorities and key activities and achievements during 2016–17. Table 3 shows how Finance’s outcome statements and programs link to its purposes.

Table 3: Finance’s purposes as linked to outcome statements, 30 June 2017

Priorities

Our key priorities for 2016–17 were as follows:

• supporting the government in delivering its fiscal policy objectives through the Budget and financial advice, management and reporting purpose, as required by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013
• supporting public sector transformation through targeted investments in specific initiatives to assist the Australian Public Service become more collaborative, innovative and agile
• contributing to the smaller and more efficient government agenda, including by continuing to review and reform a number of government business enterprises and other similar Commonwealth activities
• supporting the government’s agenda to modernise approaches for the efficient delivery and management of publicly funded services and assets, including continuing to rationalise the Commonwealth’s non-Defence property holdings and improving the efficiency of Commonwealth property management
• ongoing internal transformation of our business model, tools and systems to maximise efficiency and ensure delivery of the government’s policy agenda
• completing the redevelopment of the new Central Budget Management System Implementation of the new system to commence on 26 July 2017. The new system will be implemented over a six month period to accord with the Australian Government’s financial reporting requirements and the 2017–18 budget cycle. The 2016–17 Final Budget Outcome was the first item produced using the new system
• establishing sound governance arrangements for the Service Delivery Office and its 13 client entities to enable effective strategic planning, decision making, risk and control management, performance monitoring and reporting, and communication

Finance’s transformation agenda

Finance’s transformation agenda supports the delivery of our key activities and achievements. As part of this, Finance has implemented a new Performance and Capability Framework that replaces a twice-per-year formal performance assessment with a system that is more focused on developing employee capabilities and having more regular quality conversations between staff and managers. This more modern approach to performance and capability has already led to some very positive feedback from staff in the most recent APS Staff Employee Census.

These results include staff reporting significant increases in the positive impact of meaningful formal and informal conversations with managers on helping them to improve their performance (15 per cent and 12 per cent improvements from the previous year, respectively). The census results also indicated an 8 per cent increase on staff feeling they are provided with clear and consistent performance expectations and on how these will be assessed and measured.

The new framework improves the whole-of-organisation understanding of our capabilities and development needs. This better understanding of Finance’s workforce is already helping us to deliver improved workforce planning strategies that will help attract, build and retain an agile and high performing workforce.