The objective of the audit was to provide assurance about the Australian Taxation Office's risk management approach and to add value to its administration by analysing the economy, efficiency, administrative effectiveness, equity and accountability of the related processes employed within the organisation. The ANAO reviewed the formal risk management process that the ATO uses to deal with all sources of risk for the organisation.

The Department of Defence spends some $2.4 billion a year on major equipment acquisition projects. The audit objective was to assess Defence's arrangements for higher-level management of major equipment acquisition projects. The principal aim was to formulate practical recommendations that would both enhance Defence's management of major acquisition projects and provide a degree of assurance about its ongoing apparent capacity to do so efficiently and effectively.

The audit reviewed the operations of the Civil Aviation Authority (CASA), which has prime responsibility for regulating aviation safety in Australia. The audit objectives were to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the management systems and procedures used by CASA to ensure compliance with regulatory controls by Air Operator's Certificate holders operating passenger-carrying aircraft within High Capacity Regular Public Transport; Low Capacity Regular Public Transport and charter industry sectors; and Certificate of Approval holders. Aviation safety compliance includes entry control, surveillance and enforcement.

The objective of the audit was to assess whether Centrelink's Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was based on key elements of better practice principles and its use assisted Centrelink to understand and communicate its performance against its strategic goals. The audit examined:

• the use of the BSC in setting Centrelink's vision and goals;
• the role of the BSC in planning;
• alignment of the BSC from the top down through the organisation and the interdependencies of scoreboards used by various support units, the definition and use of measures, including target setting and links to goals within the BSC framework; and
• its use in monitoring, reporting and feedback.

The audit followed-up the ANAO's original audit report into the aviation safety regulatory activities of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) (Audit Report No.19 1999-2000 Aviation Safety Compliance). The objective of the follow-up audit were to determine, in respect of issues addressed by the original audit recommendations, whether CASA has made satisfactory progress to improve its aviation safety surveillance and compliance activities; and whether the introduction of new strategies for further improvement is being appropriately managed.

The objective of this follow-up audit was to assess the extent to which APRA has implemented recommendations regarding the supervisory framework and cross-border banking made in ANAO's 2001 audit of bank prudential supervision.

Pursuant to a request from the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee and the Auditor - General's response to the Committee, the objective of this performance audit was to examine and report on the selection of the preferred tenderer in the Health Group IT outsourcing process. In particular, the audit examined the circumstances surrounding OASITO's administration of the: - disclosure to a tenderer of information provided by other tenderers; - subsequent acceptance of a late re-pricing offer from a tenderer: and - advice to the decision- maker leading to the selection of the preferred tenderer. The audit focused particularly on assessing the administrative processes undertaken in the selection of the preferred tenderer for the Health Group. Audit emphasis was placed on the management of the probity aspects of the tender process, particularly in regard to events that occurred between June 1999, when the tenderers provided their penultimate pricing, and the selection of the preferred tenderer in September 1999.

The audit reviewed Defence's higher-level management of its knowledge system equipment acquisition projects. These amount to $8.5b. The focus of the audit was on the opportunities for Defence to adopt a much more coherent and integrated approach to knowledge systems management prospectively rather than on emphasising current system compatibility issues.

The objective of the audit was to examine the effectiveness of the Department of Health and Ageing’s administration of New Directions. In this respect the ANAO considered whether:

• planning processes were developed to support the program’s objectives and rationale;
• implementation arrangements were clearly defined and aligned to the objectives of the program; and
• robust performance management arrangements had been established and were in use by the department.

The audit examined the review of decisions on veterans' disability compensation. The audit objective was to examine the management of internal review by the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) and external review by the Veterans' Review Board (VRB) of decisions by the Repatriation Commission on veterans' claims for disability compensation.