Social Justice Report 2003: SUMMARY SHEET THREE: COAG TRIALS
Media Pack:
SUMMARY SHEET THREE: COAG TRIALS
In its communique of 5 April 2002, the Council
of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to trial a whole-of-government
cooperative approach in up to 10 communities or regions of Australia.
Appendix 2 of the report provides a detailed overview of the structure
of the trials, and progress in each trial site.
'While the trials remain in the preliminary
stages of development, rapid progress has been made during 2003 ... Government
departments are embracing the challenge to re-learn how to interact with
and deliver services to Indigenous peoples ... Through the active involvement
of Ministers and secretaries of federal departments in the trials, a clear
message is being sent through mainstream federal departments that these
trials matter and that government is serious about improving outcomes
for Indigenous peoples ... ATSIC have stated that to date 'there has been
clear success through improved relationships across governments at trial
sites' (p42).
It is too early to determine whether the
trials will have a positive impact in improving government service delivery
to communities in each trial region in the longer term or whether transferable
lessons will be learnt which are able to more broadly benefit other Indigenous
communities.
'The lack of a clear evaluation strategy is of
great concern. It may be that the uncertainty in this regard is largely
the product of the evolving nature of the trials and that there will be
much greater clarity during 2004. I have previously, however, expressed
concern at reliance by COAG on internal monitoring and evaluation strategies.
In particular, I have expressed concerns about the lack of information
that is publicly reported about such evaluations (thus limiting government
accountability), the lack of appropriate consultation with Indigenous
peoples and lack of independence in the monitoring process.'
'A related issue is the existence of adequate
data to contribute to the monitoring and evaluation process. The concern
is that the trials have set objectives for data analysis and performance
monitoring that will not be able to be achieved because of the existing
limitations in data quality and collection (p47).
It is not clear how the lessons learnt from the
trials will be transferable and contribute to broader reform of program
design and service delivery for Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, the transferability
of outcomes from the trials in the longer term will depend on whether
the trials are able to more broadly change the status quo of service delivery
and program guidelines. A significant challenge will be ensuring that
the adoption of more holistic, whole-of-government approaches is not a
transient feature and that departments do not simply slip back into their
usual ways of doing things once the trials have ended.
Factors that will need to be addressed to ensure
that this is not the case include: continued engagement of mainstream
departments and programs, coordinating funding of proposals in non-trial
sites, resource constraints, and capacity development of Indigenous communities.
There are also a number of processes available
to ATSIC and Indigenous peoples to build on the achievements of the trials
and more broadly inform policies and programs. There are three significant
processes which ATSIC currently utilises which provide ATSIC with some
leverage for advancing inter-governmental coordination and improved service
delivery:
- ATSIC has entered into a number of partnership agreements
with states and territories, as well as agreements and compacts with
federal government departments. - through the operation of ATSIC's Regional Councils and
the development of their regional plans. Regional plans offer a significant
opportunity for coordinating government activity within regions. - ATSIC leads the Community Participation Agreements (CPA)
initiative under the Australians Working Together package.
A further tool which is available to Indigenous
communities to build on the advances of the COAG trials are the Indigenous
Land Use Agreement provisions of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).
'Overall, the COAG whole-of-government community
trials have advanced significantly during 2003 and offer much potential
for reforming inter-government and whole-of-government approaches to service
delivery to Indigenous peoples. There have already been a number of achievements
from the process. There remain a number of challenges and some structural
issues (particularly relating to monitoring and evaluation) that remain
to be addressed. The long term success of the process will, however, depend
on how the trials promote structural change in the way that governments
go about delivering services to Indigenous peoples' (p54).