The After The Program Design

     ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 45

2.8 The

customer guidelines were not subject to the approval process outlined in the CGGs on advice taken from Finance. This situation made it easier for the department to make changes over time, particularly in relation to the assessment approach. However, as previously outlined by ANAO, the approach of having two separate sets of guidelines for a program, with important detail not included in the guidelines subject to the grants administration framework approval processes was not consistent with better practice.

2.9 For

example, the program guidelines outlined the merit criteria for the programs, but the customer guidelines provided further details regarding the implementation of those criteria see Figure 2.1. Of particular significance was that the program guidelines did not identify that two indicators were being used to assess applications against the first and most heavily weighted merit criterion, or the relative weighting applied to those two indicators. 52 Other program documentation

2.10 To

assist applicants, the department also repeated some of the information in the program and customer guidelines in the electronic application form a ‘smartform’ and in a series of fact sheets. 53 In addition to the published program documentation, the department developed a procedures manual that:  described the roles and responsibilities of departmental officials when processing and assessing applications;  included a framework for allocating merit scores to applications; and  provided a template for the departmental assessment. 52 The application of these indicators is examined further in Chapter 4. 53 There were 22 separate documents of varying length published for the CTIP, with most of these documents updated at least once. ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program