Report on Government Services 2007

The twelfth edition of the Report on Government Services is being released.

The Report examines the performance of all governments providing education, justice, emergency management, health, community services and housing. These services account for 60 per cent of government recurrent expenditure and over 10 per cent of gross domestic product.

The Report, under a collaborative process initiated by Heads of Government in July 1993, is produced by a Steering Committee comprising senior officials from Australian, State and Territory governments. It is chaired by Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission.

Mr Banks acknowledged governments’ ongoing commitment to performance reporting, with the Report’s quality and scope improving again this year. He drew attention to additional learning outcomes for schools and new public hospital workforce sustainability indicators. Information is reported for the first time on the ‘availability of dentists’ and on disability prevalence rates among Indigenous Australians.

Gary Banks observed that, despite such improvements, significant gaps in reporting remain. He said that reporting on services to Indigenous Australians is a priority, and noted that there is a pressing need to improve administrative data collections for Indigenous people, if progress is to be effectively monitored. (The data in this report complement the Review’s separate publication, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators, the third issue of which will be published in June 2007.)