As However, Program Design

‐ ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 63 Figure 2.3: Comparison of merit score in the documentation provided Source: ANAO analysis of AusIndustry data.

2.57 In

September 2014, an IA committee chair advised ANAO that the relevant committee had held ‘detailed, meaningful and complex’ discussions and that: As you know there were no transcripts of these discussions and hence the final recommendation is merely that, a recommendation based on significant inputs firstly of course the CSMs recommendation and the Merit Criteria summaries, and finally in most cases intense deliberation. It is for this reason that the assessment recommendations were not always perfectly correlated with absolute merit criteria scores. The recommendations necessarily and properly in my view, incorporated many more issues, both objective in some cases and subjective in others where the expert committees experience were well utilised. ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 64

2.58 The situation in relation to the programs was similar to that identified in

an earlier ANAO audit of a program implemented by the department, as follows: The minutes of Board meetings in the second funding round describe the approach taken by the Board to assess applications and contained details of the Board’s overall merit assessment for each application. Other details relating to the Board’s assessment of each application—such as the Board’s overall assessment comment and details of assessments against the individual evaluation criteria—were not reflected in the final minutes. Rather, the department advised that this information was documented in supporting spreadsheets. While details of the Board’s overall assessment comments were available, details of the Board’s assessments at the individual criteria level were unable to be located by the department during the course of the audit. 74

2.59 The department accepted the subsequent recommendation made in the earlier

audit for improved documentation of the assessment process. Disclosures of interest

2.60 The program guidelines and IA’s disclosure of interest guidelines set out

how potential conflicts of interest were to be identified and managed for IA committee members. If a conflict was declared prior to a meeting, the committee member did not receive a copy of the relevant application. In addition, committee members were invited to declare any additional disclosures for which they became aware of at the start of each meeting, following receipt of the meeting papers. Committee members then left the meeting room before discussion of the relevant application and this was documented in the minutes. To support committee members in making conflict of interest disclosures, the department developed and circulated ‘disclosure of interest’ statements relating to applicants, which contained information on collaborative partners, directors, board members and primary shareholders.

2.61 Notwithstanding the requirements of IA disclosure of interest guidelines,

in 28 of the 92 material disclosures, the signed minutes did not 74 ANAO Audit Report No. 37 of 2012–13, Administration of Grants from the Education Investment Fund, 22 May 2013.