Following Access to Funding

ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 77 delegate after this guidance was issued to the department. Of these applications, 69 per cent were approved by the delegate. This is slightly lower than the overall rate of approval of applications, which, as discussed in paragraph 2.33, was 74 per cent.

3.15 In

September 2014, the department advised ANAO that its streamlined processes for projects seeking less than 300 000 in grant funds was designed to encourage staff to ‘limit their due diligence in accordance with the complexity and risk of applications’. However, for the wider group of applications, the department’s due diligence went beyond simply clarifying and confirming the information presented in each application and extended to initiating and promoting changes to projects that were unlikely to be funded under the programs in their original form. 88 In this context, the approach of seeking to limit departmental assistance to some applicants and not others was inequitable, particularly when considered against the advice given in the customer guidelines that incomplete applications would not be considered. Reframing of applications by the department and Innovation Australia

3.16 In

addition to the 61 applications identified as ineligible, the grant amount was changed by the applicant, department or IA committee during the assessment process for a further 215 applications. 89 Of particular note in this respect was that:  a number of applications were reframed to exclude ineligible expenditure items 90 with 83 applications reframed during the departmental assessment and five applications reframed during the IA committee assessment 91 ;  applications were also reframed to exclude eligible expenditure items that did not provide value for money with 56 applications reframed to exclude eligible items during the departmental assessment and 88 Examples of the approach taken by the department are set out in paragraphs 3.25 and 3.26. 89 In reference to the 814 applications that were considered by the program delegate, the rate of reframing applications was 26 per cent. 90 An appendix to the customer guidelines outlined the items of expenditure that were eligible for funding. 91 There was one application that was reframed during the departmental assessment and the IA committee assessment. Therefore, a total of 85 applications were reframed to exclude ineligible expenditure items.