In Consistent Access to Funding

ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 88

3.44 Cabinet

considered and agreed to fund the project on 24 June 2013 subject to conditions that replicated the information requested by the IA committee. This incorporated a decision to fund the project as a new policy proposal outside of the programs, but with the 23.0 million in funding required to be offset from the programs.

3.45 In

November 2014 the department advised ANAO that:  the funding agreement included a number of conditions the company must satisfy before payments are made and the company has provided information in relation to all the conditions;  the company has submitted a request to vary the funding agreement proposing a change to the technology;  the department was undertaking due diligence on the information provided with a view to putting a recommendation to the program delegate shortly; and  no payments had been made to date. Conclusion

3.46 The

process that was established by the department for assessing the eligibility and merit of applications was focussed on helping businesses access funding under the programs. However, the level of assistance provided does not sit comfortably with the operation of a competitive grants program under the Australian Government’s grants administration framework. Rather than asking applicants to resubmit a reframed application, it was common for those responsible for assessing applications to:  permit some 108 applications that had been identified as incomplete to proceed to departmental merit assessment 109 ; and  reframe the project activities, expenditure andor underlying assumptions for some applications to improve the application’s 108 Demonstrating an inconsistent approach in this area, in May 2013 the department implemented a streamlined approach in respect to applications that sought less than 300 000 in grant funds that afforded those applicants less opportunity to provide a complete application than those seeking greater amounts of funding. 109 There was no evidence that suggested that incomplete applications had progressed to the Innovation Australia merit assessment. In addition, the IA committees had the option to defer making a recommendation on an application if additional information was required.       ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 89 assessed merit in terms of the published criteria. The focus was on assisting applicants whose application was otherwise unlikely to score well enough to be recommended for approval, rather than seeking to reframe all applications where the department considered the applicant could have proposed a more meritorious approach as assessed against the published criteria.

3.47 The

approach adopted for the programs went well beyond clarifying information included in applications and seeking to address any minor information missing from the application. More broadly, combining advisory and assessment roles is an approach not well suited to maintaining an objective assessment of competing applications. In this context, where government