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Report on Government Services

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  • Media release
  • About report

This report was released on 31 January 2013. It has been produced by the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision (SCRGSP). The report has been published in two volumes.

Also released with the report are attachment tables and data quality information (DQI). These are not part of the printed report but are available on this web page.

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Media release

Report on Government Services 2013

The Report on Government Services 2013 is being released on 31 January 2013. The Report is produced by a Steering Committee of senior officials from Australian, State and Territory governments for the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The Steering Committee was chaired during 2012 by Gary Banks, then Chairman of the Productivity Commission. Gary Banks' term of appointment as Chairman of the Commission and of the Steering Committee ended on 31 December 2012.

The Report promotes awareness about the performance of government services and helps drive improvements in design and delivery. The services covered by the Report are particularly important for the more disadvantaged members of society, who benefit from better access to services and improved delivery. There are also economic benefits from improving the efficiency of these services - governments spent over $170 billion on the services covered in this year's Report, equivalent to around 11.8 per cent of Australia's national income.

This is the eighteenth edition of the Report. Enhancements on previous editions include further development of the overviews for each of the broad service sectors. High level summaries of performance are now included in the areas of: Child care, education and training; Justice; Emergency management; Health; Community services; and Housing and homelessness.

Some chapters of the Report focus on the performance of agencies that provide services to specific groups in society - for example, the chapters on: Aged care services; Services for people with disability; and Early childhood education and care. The Report also aims to present information on the performance of services provided to the following special needs groups: Indigenous Australians; people living in communities outside the capital cities; and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. However, the Steering Committee notes the paucity of data on outcomes for these groups in some service areas.

Information on each service covered by the Report is summarised in the attached Factsheets. Improvements in the 2013 Report are outlined in the introductory sections of each service-area chapter. The most recent data (and any errata) will appear on the Steering Committee's web page.

Errata

The following errata have been issued for the Report on Government Services 2013. The applicable chapters have been amended on the website to reflect these errata.

Chapter 3 - Early childhood education and care

Some data for Victorian Government expenditure on child care and preschool for 2011-12 in tables 3A.3, 3A.5 and 3A.51 have been corrected. Consequently, national totals in tables 3A.3 and 3A.5 and text describing the proportion of expenditure on preschool services (page 3.8) has been amended.

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Chapter 9 - Fire and ambulance services

Footnote e to figure 9.17 Property loss from structure fire per person (2011-12 dollars) on page 9A.36 and footnote b to table 9.4 on page 9.42 were incorrectly reported for Queensland.

The text in box 9.33 Level of patient satisfaction on page 9.68 incorrectly reported the status of data quality information.

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Sector overview E - Health

The category labels for the age standardised Indigenous mortality rate (table E.2) are incorrect in the printed publication have been revised. The categories affected are Kidney diseases, Conditions originating in perinatal period, Infectious and parasitic diseases, and Nervous system diseases.

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Sector overview E - Health, Chapter 10 - Public hospitals

Emergency department waiting times by urgency category for 2011-12 have been changed.

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Chapter 11 - Primary and community health

Data for Australian Government real expenditure per person on GPs (2011-12 dollars) were incorrectly reported in figure 11.36 and in attachment table 11A.2 for the years 2006-07 to 2009-10.

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Chapter 13 - Aged care

Figure 13.14 HACC recipients per 1000 aged care target population, 30 June 2012 data were incorrectly labelled in the legend.

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Chapter 14 - Services for people with disability

Figure 14.28 Government contribution per employment service user assisted (2010-11 dollars) data was incorrectly reported.

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Chapter 15 - Child protection and youth justice services

Historical data for Victoria were revised in figures 15.16 and 15.17 on pages 15.54 and 15.55.

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Chapter 17 - Homelessness services

The following data for 2011-12 have changed:

  • proportion of Indigenous people represented in specialist homelessness services
  • proportion of Indigenous clients experiencing homelessness who had repeat periods of homelessness.

Download the errata

Download the report by chapters

Preliminaries

  • Preliminaries (PDF - 315 Kb)
    Cover, Copyright, Foreword, Contents, Steering Committee, Acronyms and abbreviations, Glossay and Terms of Reference

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