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Australian Government Grants: Briefing and Reporting released in May 2013. The
mandatory data fields that must be populated by agencies when publishing
grant details include grant recipient, value inclusive of GST, approval or
commencement date, grant term, location and postcode.
6.4 ANAO
compared the information reported on the department’s website
with information in submitted applications and executed funding agreements.
This analysis confirmed that the grant information relating to ‘grant
funding location’ and ‘postcode’ reported on the department’s website was
accurate in most instances, except for:
five applications for which the head office address was reported; and
37
applications which involved projects at multiple locations.
6.5 In
this respect, Finance Circulars 200904 and 201302 both required the ‘grant
funding location’ to describe the area where funding is to be used. For grants
that are provided to multiple locations, details are required that best describe
the area where funding is to be provided, such as Riverina, NSW or national.
6.6 As
was required by the CGGs, the department’s website reporting related
to the signing of funding agreements rather than the award of individual
grants. In this respect, the most common method of reporting used by
the department was to report the date that the funding agreement was executed
as the commencement date and the project end date in place of the grant
term, as shown in Figure 6.1.
Figure 6.1: Grant reporting
Source: ANAO analysis of
departmental records
.
6.7 In
March 2013, the department was advised by Finance that, as long as the
total duration for example, the start and end dates was provided in the website
reporting of grants, the grant end date would suffice. However, in the department’s
website reporting:
ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program
125
a
negative grant term was reported for 42 executed grants, with the commencement
date reported as being after the end date; and
a grant term of up to 10 days was reported for another 11 executed
grants.
6.8 Reporting
of at least seven per cent of grants was, therefore, inconsistent
with the CGGs requirement to report the ‘grant term’ in months and,
failing that, Finance’s advice that the total duration must be reflected in the
website reporting.
AusIndustry reporting
6.9 In
addition to publishing information on grants executed under the programs
on the department’s website to comply with the CGGs requirements, grants
approved under the programs were published on AusIndustry’s website
to ‘assist potential customers better understand the type of projects that
were supportable’.
143
6.10 Publication
of both the executed and approved amounts on two different
websites had the potential to confuse stakeholders, as the reporting used
inconsistent grant amounts reporting the executed amount inclusive of GST
on the department’s website, but the approved amount exclusive of GST on
the AusIndustry website. In this respect, the department advised ANAO that
the grant recipient details for publication were generated using two different
processes. The list of grantees published on the department’s website was
generated using its finance payments system, while the list published on the
AusIndustry website was based on information in the department’s grants management
system, with the project description confirmed with the grant recipient
prior to the information being published.
6.11 The
department has committed to streamlining its reporting process. In this
context, since the closure of the programs, the AusIndustry website has been
merged with similar websites to form a single consolidated website for business.
144
143 In line with the department’s advice, the AusIndustry website reporting included additional information that was not required by CGGs reporting, including the industry sector and form of energy efficiency or
emissions reduction measures contained in approved projects. 144 See
www.business.gov.au .
