Responses to questions from the Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee request of 4 March 2015

Request 1: A breakdown of the program funding nationally – with a comparison between 2013-14 and 2014-15 budget allocations.

Broadbanding of programmes in the 2014-15 Budget streamlined the Department of Social Services’ (the Department) programmes and grants.  This changed the structure and composition of the Department’s outcomes and programmes, bringing together 18 programmes from five former departments into seven streamlined programmes. based on common social policy functions.  As a result, the 2013-14 and 2014-15 Budget allocations are not comparable between historical and new service delivery arrangements.  The diagram at Appendix A outlines the programme structure under the New Way of Working for grants. 

The reduction of around $270 million to the Department’s grants funding is the result of Government decisions made in the context of both the 2014-15 Budget and the 2014-15 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO).

Note that the $30 million returned to Budget in MYEFO was a “decision taken but not yet announced”.  As such, the breakdown of this measure was not published as part of the 2014-15 MYEFO papers or Portfolio Additional Estimates Statements.

Further information on the allocation of the $240 million in savings made at the 2014‑15 Budget is provided in the Department’s 2014-15 Portfolio Budget Statements, at page 36, table 1.2.  A summary of which is also reflected below:   

Request 2: A breakdown of the program funding by state – with a comparison between 2013-14 and 2014-15 budget allocations.

The 2013-14 and 2014-15 budget allocations are not comparable because of the broadbanding of programmes in the 2014-15 Budget.   

However, to assist the Committee, a breakdown for 2014-15 has been provided at Appendix B, with funding for 2013-14 provided at the activity level at Appendix C.  Note that funding is allocated to the state where the head office of an organisation is located.  This may not always be where services are actually delivered.

Request 3: A list of providers who have accepted the funding by service area and the total allocated to each provider.

A list of providers who have accepted the funding by service area is provided at Appendix D.  Service areas are mapped in line with the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) at the Statistical Area 3 (SA3) level.  There are a total of 333 regions at the SA3 level in Australia.  The determination for a SA3 level is a region with populations in the range of 30,000 – 130,000.  

The Department has introduced the ASGS to provide consistency in the way service areas are described across most programmes.  The ASGS is more stable than other boundary sets and is being used by an increasing number of agencies for improved service integration and policy analysis.  The funding allocated to each provider is at Appendix E.

Request 4: A list of providers who received grant funding in 2013-14 by program area, state and service area.

Appendix C provides a list of the 2013-14 organisations by activity and state.

The funding is allocated to the state where the head office of an organisation is located, which may not always be where services are actually delivered.  Service area information is not available for the 2013-14 funding period.

It is only since the 2014-15 broadbanding of programmes that the Department has begun collecting service areas in grant agreements. 

Request 5: The total number of providers who tendered for services; the total number of providers who applied for funding but were not successful in the recent round; the total number of unsuccessful providers who received funding in the previous four years (by program and by state).

As at 26 March 2015, a total of 2,679 organisations applied for funding in the recent funding round. Of those, 1,986 organisations were unsuccessful in any funding round. 

Of those organisations that were unsuccessful, 1139 are currently receiving funding from the Department. 

Due to machinery of government changes, a number of programmes have been transferred to and from the Department. To provide a full analysis covering the previous four years of funding to unsuccessful organisations (by program and by state) the staffing resources required would be substantial, and the Department does not have capacity to divert additional staff for this purpose.

Request 6: The categories of reasons why services were not granted tenders and an indication of how many services were unsuccessful in each category.

DSS considered each proposal against eligibility requirements and equally weighted selection criteria as stated in the application pack. Only organisations which rated highly in all aspects of the selection criteria were identified as successful applicants.

Feedback summaries on applications for each round are available on the Department’s website and can be accessed via the round specific page using the address below.

https://www.dss.gov.au/grants/closed-funding-rounds

Appendix List - All data provided is as at 26 March 2015

Appendix A:   Honeycomb Diagram

Appendix B:   Breakdown of 2014-15 Programme funding by State, by Outcome, by. Activity

Appendix C:   Breakdown of 2013-14 Programme funding by State, by Activity.

Appendix D:   List of funded providers in 2014-15 by service area.

Appendix E:  List of funding allocated to providers for 2014-15.

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