Report on Government Services 2000

The fifth annual Report on Government Services 2000, released today, examines the recent performance of governments in the important areas of education, health, justice, emergency management, community services and housing. These services are central to the wellbeing of all Australians, and account for about $55 billion of governments’ expenditure.

The report is the most comprehensive source of comparative information on the performance of these services throughout Australia, and the output of a cooperative project involving more than 80 agencies from all governments. The report was compiled by the inter-governmental Steering Committee for the Review of Commonwealth/State Service Provision.

The Chairman of the Steering Committee, Gary Banks, said “Getting policy right in these areas is hard, but must be a priority for all governments. They are increasingly aware of the need for good information to learn from each other’s experience when assessing policy options, developing new service delivery programs, or setting budgets for existing programs.”

The report identifies similarities, but also important differences in performance indicators across the Commonwealth, States and Territories. The costs of providing many services differ widely (for example, as reported in the vocational education and training chapter). Outcomes also vary across the country, with examples including immunisation rates (discussed in the general practice chapter) and fire deaths (in emergency management). Performance data in each of the services covered by the report should aid better understanding of the causes of such differences.

Mr Banks, who is also Chairman of the Productivity Commission, noted “each of the services covered raises complex measurement issues. This makes it important to present and interpret the information very carefully. The data has some way to go. For example, data enabling comparisons across jurisdictions of learning outcomes for schools and on quality in hospitals is not yet available. But good progress is being made overall.”

Some advances in reporting this year include:

• for services for people with a disability — data on client and family views about a broad range of service attributes (pp. 1037–1042)
• for housing — Commonwealth Rent Assistance performance data for the first time (p. 1401)
• for police — expenditure by service delivery area (community safety and support, crime investigation, road safety and traffic management and services to the judicial process) (p. 523).

Progress has also been made in improving reporting on the access of Indigenous people to mainstream services (see fact sheet), but considerably more remains to be done.