Annual Report 2003–04
Departmental overview
Role
The department’s role is to serve the Senate and its committees, and its functions are almost entirely determined by their activities. In supporting the operations of the Senate and its committees, the department provides services in four main categories: Senate support, committee support, senators’ services and public education and awareness.
The department is responsible to the Senate and all senators, and maintains complete impartiality in serving senators from all political parties and independent senators.
Aim and objectives
As stated in the department’s corporate plan, our aim is:
To provide effective services to support the functioning of the Senate, and its committees, as a House of the Commonwealth Parliament.
Within that broad aim, our objectives are to:
- maintain and improve services to the Senate, its committees, senators and other users of departmental resources
- ensure the highest standard of accurate and prompt procedural advice
- further develop our expertise in the constitutional and procedural bases of the Senate and its committees
- publish a range of practical procedural resources on the work of the Senate and the Parliament
- produce and deliver effective education and information programs
- maximise awareness of and access to the department’s services and information resources.
Organisational structure
The department is responsible to the Senate through the President of the Senate, Senator the Honourable Paul Calvert.
The Secretary of the department is the Clerk of the Senate, Mr Harry Evans.
The department is organised into five offices:
- Clerk’s Office, which provides advice in relation to the proceedings of the Senate and its committees, strategic direction for the department and secretariat support for the Procedure Committee, the Committee of Privileges and the Committee of Senators’ Interests, and maintains the Register of Senators’ Interests
- Table Office, which provides procedural advice and programming services; processes legislation; produces documents, including the record of Senate proceedings; is custodian of Senate records; provides an inquiries service; and provides secretariat support to the Senate and Joint Committees on Publications, the Senate Standing Committee on Appropriations and Staffing and the Selection of Bills Committee
- Procedure Office, which provides procedural advice and legislative drafting services to non-government senators, secretariat support to the legislative scrutiny committees and policy support for interparliamentary relations; conducts parliamentary research; and promotes awareness and knowledge of the Senate and the Parliament in the community
- Committee Office, which provides most Senate and certain joint committees with secretariat support and strives to increase the public’s awareness of the work of committees
- Black Rod’s Office, which provides senators and departmental staff with office, information technology and ceremonial services, and with human resource, financial and records management services; and provides security advice.
Figure 1 identifies the elements that make up each of the offices. Contact details of office-holders and senior officers of the department are listed in Appendix 1, together with other contact information.
During 2003–04, the organisational structure remained the same as in 2002–03, except with regard to the department’s security function, which (as discussed in the report on Outcome 1) was the subject of a recommendation of the Review by the Parliamentary Service Commissioner of Aspects of the Administration of the Parliament (known as the Podger review). As foreshadowed in last year’s report, security staff were transferred to the then Joint House Department in two stages, on 1 July and 23 October 2003, but funding for the security function remained with the department under a purchaser–provider arrangement until the end of the financial year (see the report on Output Group 5 for more details).
Certain other recommendations of the Podger review were adopted by the Senate on 18 August 2003 (and by the House of Representatives on 14 August 2003), resulting in the creation of the Department of Parliamentary Services on 1 February 2004 from the amalgamation of the three former joint departments. The amalgamation did not immediately affect the organisational structure of the department but the question of the provision of human resources and financial transaction-processing services to the department by the Department of Parliamentary Services remained as a possibility to be considered at some time in the future, in accordance with the resolution of the Senate of 18 August 2003.
Figure 1: Organisational structure at 30 June 2004
Outcome and output structure
Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between the department’s organisational and output structures, and summarises the outputs delivered by each output group. A detailed statement of each set of outputs—and, where relevant, administered items—is provided at the beginning of each output group’s report on performance.
Figure 2 Output structure at 30 June 2004