Part 2: Achievements and challenges–performance insights
- Building the evidence base
- Partnerships
- Volunteering
- Indigenous communities
- Stronger Families and Communities Strategy
- More help for families
- Helping prevent homelessness
- Giving children the best possible start in life
- The new Child Care Support Program
- Helping parents support their children—the Child Support Agency
- Work and family
- Encouraging participation
- Reforms to support people with disabilities
- FaCS–Centrelink Business Alliance
- People are a priority in FaCS
- FaCS triple bottom line reporting
FaCS–Centrelink Business Alliance
Key points
- The new FaCS–Centrelink business alliance agreement will focus more on outcomes.
- The business alliance will lead to better outcomes for customers and community, by improving accountability to government and the efficiency of the FaCS–Centrelink relationship.
Our business relationship with our major service delivery provider–Centrelink–is of fundamental importance to our effectiveness. Centrelink delivers services and programs on behalf of FaCS that make up more than a third of government outlays, provide assistance to the majority of Australian families with children and make payments to over four million individuals at any one time.
In 2003–04 FaCS and Centrelink developed a new model for doing business together that is based on the unique roles and different areas of expertise of the two agencies, and ensures that we work together collaboratively to maximise the impact that ministers and government want from us.
The business alliance model that we have developed is designed to provide our staff with a clear line of sight from what government wants from us–our portfolio outcomes and outputs–to our key performance indicators with Centrelink, to our risk management processes and to our funding inputs. The model addresses a number of aspects of our alliance, including performance, key risks, cost, governance, roles, responsibilities, and behaviours. Further information on the business alliance model is in Volume two, Part two, 'Partnerships for people'.
Challenges for the future business alliance
There will be significant challenges in 2004–05 in consolidating the gains from the development of this new business alliance and embedding the five key aspirations that we have developed for our relationship: transparency; responsiveness; clarity of expectations and outcomes; trustworthiness; and appreciation of shared risks.
