Operational Plan 2020-21 - Priorities and protocols - Parliament of Victoria
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Operational Plan 2020-21
Priorities and protocols
pbo.vic.gov.au FINAL June 2020Parliamentary Budget Office
Postal address Parliament House Spring Street East Melbourne Australia 3002
Email address enquiries@pbo.vic.gov.au
Telephone +613 8682 2699
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© Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office 2020.
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Operational Plan 2020-21 | Priorities and protocols, available under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 AustraliaContents
Foreword ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2
Purpose............................................................................................................................. 2
Background ....................................................................................................................... 2
Priorities...................................................................................................................................... 2
Operational ....................................................................................................................... 2
Governance ...................................................................................................................... 2
Strategic ............................................................................................................................ 3
Protocols..................................................................................................................................... 4
Framework for 2020-21 ..................................................................................................... 4
Operations .................................................................................................................................. 8
Structure ........................................................................................................................... 8
Public Accounts and Estimates Committee....................................................................... 8
Measuring performance .................................................................................................... 9
— Public awareness advice................................................................................ 10
— PBO Strategic Plan 2020-23 ........................................................................... 12Operational Plan 2020-21
Foreword
The Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office has The office’s experience over the last two years
now been informing members policy choices continues to highlight the importance of my
for two years. We have well established priority to strengthen foundations for the future.
approaches to support our clients and The Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office is
continually strive for independent, authoritative the first permanent sub-national independent
and timely advice through the expertise of our fiscal institution in Australia. Its distinctive
people. With completion of election services in mandate includes election services and advice
2019, we established an innovative advisory to members on fiscal, economic and financial
service to complement our policy costings. matters. This strategic context needs to be
Together, they contribute to members’ policy shaped and nurtured to provide greater clarity
development, public awareness and and long-term value. I will continue to find
parliamentary debate. opportunities to better position the office to
achieve its objectives by addressing issues I
Against this context, my priorities have evolved
have previously reported on. I will also
from the establishing the office to continuously
continue working to improve the supply of
improving what we do and the value we
public sector information, an important
provide. We will further leverage our strong
prerequisite for our services.
economic and financial capabilities to benefit
more clients now and into the future. In this plan, I am pleased to present my:
In contrast to the close proximity of my ▪ priorities for 2020-21
appointment to the 2018 general election, I am
▪ protocols for requesting our services
able to look forward and plan a smoother
pathway to the 2022 general election. This ▪ planned advice for public awareness
year we will commence preparations for our
▪ strategic plan for 2020-23.
election services to integrate with
parliamentary leaders’ election policy platform
development. We will also focus on minimising
the peak workload for our people during the
election period.
Anthony Close
Parliamentary Budget Officer
June 2020
1 Parliamentary Budget OfficePriorities and protocols
Introduction Priorities
Purpose Operational
This plan outlines the Parliamentary Budget For 2020-21, our operational priorities are to:
Office strategy, priorities and protocols for
▪ engage with members of parliament and
2020-21. It aligns with our legislation and
parliamentary leaders
strategic plan for 2020-23.
▪ prepare policy costings based on the latest
Background state budget or budget update
We completed election services for the 2018 ▪ advise on fiscal, economic, or financial
Victorian general election when we published matters including:
three post-election reports in January 2019 - technical advice and briefings
and a report of operations in February 2019.
We subsequently launched our advisory - changes to the state budget
service and began working with new and - changes to fiscal and economic
continuing members of parliament to meet their indicators
needs outside of the election period.
- topics for public awareness
Since February 2019, any member of
parliament can confidentially ask us to prepare ▪ transition corporate support services from
independent policy costings or advice on fiscal, the Department of Parliamentary Services
economic or financial matters. Our team of to another provider.
economists, accountants and public policy Appendix A proposes our public awareness
specialists seek to fully understand member advice topics.
requests before preparing our responses.
Legislation empowers us to access public Governance
sector information, supporting our authoritative
and credible responses. In 2020-21, our governance priorities are to:
We inform policy choices by providing ▪ prepare the 2019-20 Annual Report for
members with information about the impact of tabling in parliament which will:
their proposed policies and we publish - summarise our performance for the
information on our website at members’ 2019-20 financial year
requests. Members use our policy costings and
advice as confidential inputs to policy - be provided to the Public Accounts
development and, when publicly released, and Estimates Committee on or
public debate in parliament and the before the 31 October 2020.
community. ▪ prepare the 2021-22 Operational Plan for
tabling in parliament which will:
- contain our priorities for the 2021-22
financial year and service protocols
- be released by 30 June 2021, after
consultation with the Public Accounts
and Estimates Committee.
▪ better align our governance to the legal
status of the PBO.
Parliamentary Budget Office 2Operational Plan 2020-21
Strategic
Our strategic plan outlines our vision, objectives, stakeholders, priorities, risks and success measures.
Our strategic priorities are to:
▪ enhance relationships and the value we provide
▪ prepare for and deliver 2022 general election services
▪ strengthen foundations for the future.
Figure 1 – PBO strategic priorities and actions for 2020–21
Priority Actions for 2020–21
Enhance relationships and ▪ Engage with members of parliament and continuously improve our
the value we provide approaches and outputs
▪ Increase knowledge sharing and professional development of our people
Prepare for and deliver ▪ Engage with parliamentary leaders to integrate our services into their
2022 general election election planning
services ▪ Establish and implement a 2022 general election plan
Strengthen foundations for ▪ Improve public sector information supply
the future ▪ Work with the parliamentary committee to align legislation
with better practice
Source: Parliamentary Budget Office.
Appendix B provides the Parliamentary Budget Office Strategic Plan 2020-23.
3 Parliamentary Budget OfficePriorities and protocols
Protocols
We set protocols for clarity to members when requesting policy costings and advisory services from
the Parliamentary Budget Office. Our protocols set out timelines for submitting requests, procedures
for consultation, how we prioritise requests and information required for us to prepare responses.
Framework for 2020-21
Our protocols are based on balancing supply and demand for our services. We recognise that some
requests have critical response dates and that some requests are working towards longer timeframes,
such as the next general election. We work with members of parliament to obtain their suite of
submissions and their own priorities first, prior to using our prioritisation framework. This approach
optimises an equitable allocation of our resources, maximises our ability to respond to member
requests, and enables us to smooth demand over longer periods.
Figure 2 – PBO protocol framework for 2020–21
Legislative Outline of protocols
requirement
Timeline for request Being outside of an election costing period, we do not have timelines to make
submissions request submissions. Members of parliament can make them at any time.
Procedures for Consultation on submissions
consultation ▪ We provide flexibility, a member of parliament can make a request in person,
over the phone, via email or through our secure online portal.
▪ Our secure online portal contains electronic forms which provide the
necessary information to accept requests for advice and policy costings. We
can provide access to members of parliament to directly enter their request or
we can complete them on their behalf based on their input.
▪ We treat requests with insufficient information to progress, as submissions.
We will work flexibly with members of parliament to ensure we have the
necessary information to accept their submissions as requests as
responsively as possible or advise them if a submission cannot be accepted
as a request.
▪ A member of parliament can nominate a critical response date for a request or
choose no critical response date if the timing of the response is flexible.
▪ Where a member of parliament requests a critical response date, we will liaise
with them if there is insufficient time to prepare a response. The member of
parliament may choose to refine the scope of their request, change their
critical response date or withdraw their submission.
Consultation on accepting requests
▪ We will accept a submission as a request once we have sufficient information
that we can prepare a response.
▪ Where we are at full capacity, and the request has a critical response date,
we advise the member of parliament that the request will be prioritised
according to our published prioritisation approach.
▪ Where we are not at full capacity or the member of parliament does not have
a critical response date, we accept the request and communicate progress
regularly.
Parliamentary Budget Office 4Operational Plan 2020-21
Legislative Outline of protocols
requirement
Consultation on progress
▪ If no critical response date is requested, we will communicate progress
regularly with the member of parliament to manage delivery expectations.
▪ If a critical response date is requested:
- for a policy costing request, we will prepare a final response by the
critical response date
- for an advice request, we will prepare a preliminary draft response by
the critical response date for client review
- if we are unable to prepare a policy costing or advice response by the
critical response date, then we will provide a statement of insufficiency
as soon as we determine this.
▪ For large or complex requests, we will communicate an estimated timeline for
our response and describe what will be prepared.
▪ For multiple requests, we will offer regular progress meetings with the
member of parliament to manage delivery expectations and review the priority
of all requests in progress.
Consultation on our response
▪ For advice, we issue a preliminary draft of our proposed response to the
member of parliament prior to issuing our final response. This step provides
an opportunity for the member to provide feedback about the suitability of our
independent response in addressing their focusing question.
▪ After we provide a confidential written response to the member of parliament’s
request, we offer to brief them and answer their questions.
Determining the priority ▪ We prioritise each request and engage with members to explain if there will
of requests and the be a delay in progressing their request.
equitable allocation of ▪ The priority of each request is assessed based on economic, fiscal and
resources community impact, and the impact to PBO utilisation.
Information to be A member provides the following information in their submission:
provided for requests for ▪ a critical response date for us to respond by (if required)
our services
▪ for a policy costing, important policy details and costing parameters
▪ for advice, a focusing question for the advice to answer
▪ any supporting analysis or related information.
5 Parliamentary Budget OfficePriorities and protocols
Legislative Outline of protocols
requirement
Information contained in Our policy costings contain:
our policy costings ▪ document information including the member making the request, request
date, response date, policy name, policy commencement and conclusion,
security classification and expiry date
▪ a summary of the requestor’s policy proposal
▪ a visual summary of the budget impacts and costing components against the
latest state budget
▪ context that is important in understanding the costing response
▪ our approach, key assumptions and data sources
▪ year-on-year and cumulative impacts of the policy proposal over the medium
term.
Information contained in Our advice contains:
our advice ▪ document information including the member making the request, request
date, response date and security classification
▪ context that is important in understanding the response including the focusing
question that the advice is responding to, background and limitations
▪ our response to the focusing question
▪ our approach, key assumptions and data sources.
Other matters Nominated representatives
▪ A member of parliament can nominate a representative in writing to act on
their behalf.
▪ The member of parliament must advise if there are any conditions or
limitations that we should impose on the nominated representative when
acting on their behalf.
▪ The member will always receive our responses to requests made by them or
their nominated representative.
Withdrawing a request
A member can withdraw a request at any time in writing.
Statement of insufficiency
▪ If we cannot provide a response due to insufficient information or resources,
then we will issue a statement of insufficiency explaining this.
▪ A member can request that this statement be publicly released.
Parliamentary Budget Office 6Operational Plan 2020-21
Legislative Outline of protocols
requirement
Confidentiality and public release
▪ We maintain the confidentiality of a member’s identity and their request
throughout the delivery of our services.
▪ We proactively limit the public sector’s ability to infer the policy proposal,
advice sought or member’s identity when requesting information.
▪ We provide our responses confidentially to the member of parliament.
▪ We will ask the member of parliament to advise us in writing if they want our
confidential response to be publicly released.
▪ If requested, we will publicly release our confidential response.
▪ We offer members of parliament our independent review of their draft public
release material to ensure that it aligns with our response. This avoids the
need for the Officer to correct the public record if a member’s public release
material does not represent our response.
▪ We may release our confidential response without the member of parliament’s
written request if:
- the member publicly releases some or all of our response and the
Officer judges that it is necessary to provide the public with full context
- to correct the public record.
Source: Parliamentary Budget Office.
We based our protocols on 2020-21 being outside of an election costing period, which means we do
not need to prepare election policy costings, pre-election reports, post-election reports or to prioritise
election services over other policy costings and advice.
We can revise our protocols at any time based on client and operational needs. Consequently, our
current protocols are available at pbo.vic.gov.au.
7 Parliamentary Budget OfficePriorities and protocols
Operations
Structure Public Accounts and
The PBO Executive support the Officer— Estimates Committee
directors providing strategic and operational
The Public Accounts and Estimates Committee
leadership. They are responsible for:
has legislative oversight of the Parliamentary
▪ governance Budget Office including to:
▪ risk management ▪ review the operational and resourcing
▪ advising on matters affecting the PBO, arrangements for the Officer, including
members of parliament and other reviewing the draft budget for the Officer
stakeholders. ▪ consult the Officer on the operational plan
Each director leads a specialist team: ▪ review reports of PBO operations and
▪ Parliamentary Budget Office—responsible annual reports
for corporate strategy and governance ▪ review and assess how well the Officer’s
performance, operations, corporate functions are being performed
services and compliance obligations
▪ report to parliament on any matter
▪ Policy Analysis—responsible for preparing connected with the operational and
policy costings and information requests resourcing arrangements for the Officer
▪ Economic and Fiscal Policy—responsible that requires the attention of parliament.
for preparing analysis, advice and briefings The Officer will inform the committee promptly
about financial, fiscal and economic on significant matters that are impacting or
matters, as well as election services. may impact the Parliamentary Budget Office.
The Officer raised significant matters with the
Figure 3 – PBO organisational structure for committee through the Report of PBO
2020-21 Operations for the 2018 election period and the
PBO 2019-20 Annual Report.
Subsequently, the Officer has raised an issue
about the implications of the Parliamentary
Budget Office's legal status.
Note: For 2020-21, we propose 16 positions, pending
budget approval.
Source: Parliamentary Budget Office.
Parliamentary Budget Office 8Operational Plan 2020-21
Measuring performance
Satisfaction of parliamentary
Figure 4 – PBO performance measures for stakeholders
2020–21
The satisfaction of parliamentary stakeholders
Performance measure Target measures the quality of our services in meeting
their needs against our objectives of providing
Number of requests Not set
authoritative, credible and timely advice.
We measure satisfaction by surveying
Request completion rate 80 per cent members who use our services. We use an
independent external provider to provide
Satisfaction of 80 per cent
members with a confidential way to provide
parliamentary stakeholders
feedback and us with objective results.
Requests responded to by 80 per cent Requests responded to by the due
the due date
date
Total cost Actual equals Responding to member requests by a
budget
requested date is an indicator of the timeliness
of our services. We measure the proportion of
Source: Parliamentary Budget Office.
our responses that we provide to members on
or before a required due date, as a proportion
of total responses provided.
Number of requests
The number of member requests we receive is
Total cost
an indicator of the demand for our services and The total cost measures the actual financial
is impacted by the proximity to the election performance of the Officer in meeting the
period. Consequently, we do not set a target obligations of the Act against the budget set
for this measure, reporting actual results for through parliamentary appropriation.
trend analysis.
The PBO budget for 2020-21 is to be
Request completion rate confirmed, noting the delay in the state budget
due to the coronavirus pandemic. When
Although the size and complexity of each
approved, the PBO will aim to spend within its
request may vary greatly, the request
budget.
completion rate provides insight into our
capacity and productivity in responding to
member requests.
We report this measure as the total number of
requests outstanding as a proportion of the
total number of requests made and carried
over from the previous reporting period.
9 Parliamentary Budget OfficePriorities and protocols
— Public awareness advice
As we deliver policy costings and advice, we analyse matters of fiscal, economic and financial
importance that can inform members of parliament and the public more widely. Public awareness
advice represents these topics and others requested by members of parliament under section 47 of
the Parliamentary Budget Officer Act 2017, however this advice is:
▪ typically more general in nature
▪ responding to the request of more than one member
▪ prepared with members' expectation of public release.
This section outlines the advice topics we plan to prepare and release over the next three years. We
make this plan transparent to members of parliament and other stakeholders. In addition, this plan
acquits advice that we have prepared and publicly released.
Figure 5 – Public awareness advice
Topic Purpose Comments
Budget Preparing the PBO’s post-election report for the 2018 general election Combined into one
contingency highlighted complexities in how the budget utilises the contingency topic titled 'Budget
reserves reserve and treats unallocated funds. This advice will raise awareness Transparency'
of this budget component and how it is used.
Budgeting for Comparison of the PBO’s post-election report for the 2018 general
infrastructure election to the 19/20 Victorian Budget revealed differences in the
projects treatment of budgeting, particularly for large infrastructure projects.
This advice will provide an explanation of how to interpret the budget
for infrastructure projects, assess the approach used and compare
approaches against better practice.
Education Funding for the state’s education system is derived from both the Publicly released
funding Australian and Victorian governments using multiple funding models.
This advice will provide an overview of Australian and Victorian
government funding contribution, how the state allocates funds to
schools and other non-cash services that it provides and funds.
Fiscal The Financial Management Act 1994 requires the budget to prepare
sustainability financial policy objectives and strategies statements to make
transparent the government’s financial strategies and to establish a
benchmark for evaluating the conduct of financial policy. This advice
will consider better practice, assess the budget’s fiscal sustainability
objectives.
Land taxes Land taxes are relatively complex and contain exemptions. This
advice will outline how these taxes and the planning policy framework
are applied to urban development of greenfield land.
Parliamentary Budget Office 10Operational Plan 2020-21
Topic Purpose Comments
Public sector Public sector employee costs have increased due to increases in both
wages bill wages and the size of the workforce. This advice will improve
understanding of this budget component, risks and drivers.
Tax revenue Economic downturns have had a swift impact to budget revenue
stability forecasts. This advice will analyse the drivers of Victorian taxation
revenue, the volatility of these drivers and factors affecting future
stability of Victoria’s revenues.
Treatment of From 1 January 2019, accounting standards changes resulted in Publicly released
public private changes to the accounting treatment for PPP and leases. This advice
partnerships will explain how PPP are treated in the Victorian Budget 19/20 and
(PPP) in the future budgets, and how this is different from previous years to aid
budget comparison.
Major This advice will examine the major economic and fiscal challenges New
economic and facing Victoria over the medium term and how are they addressed in
fiscal the budget.
challenges
Overview of This series of advice will provide an overview of the main funding New
budget sources, key drivers, aggregates and risks for major portfolios, with an
expenditure by initial focus on the state's health portfolio.
portfolios
Efficiency of States taxes can result in behaviour changes which can either be New
Victorian state intended or unintended. An efficient tax is one that does not change
taxes individual behaviour. This advice will consider broad differences in
how the major Victorian taxes impact the economy.
Note: The number and content of advice we prepare will depend on emerging matters and priorities, alignment to other
operational activities being undertaken and the capacity of PBO resources.
Source: Parliamentary Budget Office.
11 Parliamentary Budget OfficePriorities and protocols — PBO Strategic Plan 2020-23 Parliamentary Budget Office 12
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