Date
Program 1.1: Corporate Strategy and Services Group
Corporate Strategy and Services Group’s mission is to provide efficient and effective corporate services, products and advice to the Treasury, Treasury portfolio ministers and other clients to enable them to meet their objectives. Corporate Strategy and Services Group also seeks to link policy strategy with organisational strategy to maintain the capacity of the department to deliver on its mission.
The four divisions in the group are Financial and Facilities Management, Information Management and Technology, Ministerial and Communications, and People and Organisational Strategy.
Key priorities
The key priorities in 2011-12 were to:
- provide production and logistics services for the 2012-13 Budget and related processes;
- finalise development and implementation of effective advertising campaigns, including on banking reform;
- deliver a successful Tax Forum;
- develop professional event management capability across the department;
- build awareness and understanding of Freedom of Information throughout the department;
- deliver streamlined and professional media monitoring services;
- provide support for new and emerging issues and announcements;
- implement new VOIP phone system and continue to improve the availability of IT infrastructure;
- attract, retain and develop a skilled and diverse workforce through further development of our workforce planning, career talent development systems;
- progress medium-term initiatives for organisational and workforce strategies based on the Staff Survey, Strategic Review, Graduate Review and Progressing Women initiative;
- coordinate the management of identified risks associated with the Work Health and Safety legislation and regulations;
- review and map the Treasury’s Chief Executive Instructions (CEIs) to align with the Department of Finance and Deregulation Model CEIs;
- implement recommendations from the Treasury Protective Security Risk Review;
- rationalise off-site lease office accommodation;
- redevelop the internet and intranet, strengthen record-keeping, and commence deployment of team sites to support collaboration and knowledge-sharing;
- deliver data management and reporting tools to support forecasting activities;
- provide high level services to the Secretary and the Executive Board to support and enable key forums within the Treasury’s governance framework;
- establish, coordinate and support processes within the department to develop and progress an ongoing strategic policy dialogue;
- undertake and support departmental reviews relating to organisational issues;
- ensure the effectiveness, efficiency and conformity to legislative and accountability requirements of the Treasury’s activities, systems and processes; and
- continue to provide a policy implementation monitoring and advising capability.
Key outcomes
The key outcomes were:
- successful event, (print and online) publication and media relations support for several major government announcements and initiatives, including the 2012-13 Budget;
- delivery of the Banking Reform advertising campaign, and the final phases of the Education Tax Refund advertising campaign;
- successful delivery of the Tax Forum, held on 4 and 5 October 2011;
- event management capability strengthened;
- understanding and skills continue to be reinforced within the department through close work with the policy areas and effective tool and compliance development;
- efficiencies in media monitoring services developed and implemented;
- communication support provided to the Strategic Review and Progressing Women initiatives;
- new VOIP phone system delivered successfully and IT infrastructure deployed to improve availability and business continuity;
- work continuing on the implementation of recommendations from the Strategic Review and Progressing Women initiative. Workforce planning framework agreed by the Executive Board in late 2011. Enhanced and tailored workforce reporting implemented, and planning timetable for consultations established;
- graduate review, which found high levels of satisfaction with the program, with some areas identified for improvement, including a shift to three rotations of six months each to increase graduates’ breadth of experience and enhance networking;
- risk registers were developed and a system implemented to continuously review and update the registers that are confirmed by the Work Health and Safety Committee;
- review and alignment of the Treasury’s CEIs to the issued Model CEIs completed;
- implemented the majority of the recommendations from the Treasury Protective Security Risk Review, with the remainder to be implemented by the end of 2012;
- relinquished off-site office accommodation (Canberra) in March 2012, relocating operations back into the Treasury building;
- a redeveloped Treasury internet site was launched in April 2012;
- successfully trialled the use of team sites to facilitate information discovery, use and sharing within teams;
- the delivery of the Odysseus business intelligence platform, which enables centralised time series data management;
- providing secretariat support to the Executive Board and the Audit Committee;
- organising ongoing policy dialogue across the department, including arranging policy strategy meetings and senior executive service (SES) forums;
- implementing initial recommendations of the Strategic Review of the Treasury and commencing the work program of the Progressing Women initiative;
- developing a new risk management framework and associated products to further improve risk management and corporate planning in the Treasury; and
- policy implementation monitored through regular internal and ministerial reporting.