Further Access to Funding

ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 84 which it was not clear whether the component that was excluded was integral to the project. In these cases, the assessor’s commentary was limited to the fact that the component did not provide a ‘competitive dollars of grant funding per tonne of carbon abated’ or did not contribute substantially to carbon savings.

3.31 As

discussed in paragraph 3.24, any judgement about whether a project provided ‘good value for money’ was necessarily subjective in the absence of well ‐founded benchmarks. As a result, the success of an application was ultimately dependent on the skills and experience of the departmental assessor.

3.32 Considering

that some applications were reframed because they were identified by the department as not likely to be ‘competitive’ if the assessment was based on the application that had been submitted, the changes that were made to these applications by departmental officials increased the likelihood that applications were funded. However, the approach adopted by the department was not consistently applied, highlighting the challenges to the department in achieving equitable outcomes when providing advice as part of the assessment of applications. Innovation Australia Committee merit assessment

3.33 The

published program guidelines provided that IA must undertake a formal merit assessment of all eligible applications. As with many committee arrangements, this provided a mechanism to bring specific knowledge to the task of assessing the merits of applications. In fulfilling this role, the Board of IA delegated its authority for conducting merit assessments and preparing recommendations for the decision maker to the IA committees. 101

3.34 The

active approach that was adopted by the departmental assessors in reframing applications was also adopted by the IA committees, with a least five per cent of applications considered by the IA committees reframed. 102 In this respect, there were:  24 applications that were reframed to exclude eligible expenditure items that did not provide value for money; 101 The CTIC was established in March 2012 and first met to consider applications in April 2012, the departmental committee was established in October 2012 and first met to consider applications in December 2012 and the CTFFIC was established in October 2012 and first met to consider applications in November 2012. 102 There were 42 applications that were reframed by the IA Committees. In three of these cases, the applications were reframed because the IA committee members disagreed with the changes that had been made to the application by the departmental assessor.