The objective of the audit was to assess whether the award of funding under the Building Better Regions Fund was effective as well as being consistent with the Commonwealth Grant Rules and Guidelines.

Although the audit examined broader aspects of the ATO's administration (such as, tobacco excise governance arrangements, intelligence capability and compliance and investigations activities), we placed particular emphasis on the strategies used by the ATO to address the proliferation of chop-chop (Australian grown tobacco sold illicitly in a chopped up form for $80 to $100 per kilogram. In comparison, 50 grams of legal roll-you-own tobacco costs around $16 i.e. $320 per kilogram) in the Australian markets, as it is an area of major risk to tobacco excise revenue.

This report summarises audit and other related activities of the Australian National Audit Office in the period July to December 1999.

The objective of this audit was to examine whether Army effectively administers the Army Individual Readiness Notice to support the achievement of its purpose.

The objective of the audit is to examine and report on the efficiency and effectiveness of AFP's administration and management of its overseas deployments. The audit specifically examines two deployments and focuses on strategic and operational planning and logistics. The audit examines a planned, long-term overseas deployment (as part of the Participating Police Force (PPF) within the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI)) and a crisis-driven deployment in response to a specific event (Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) assistance to Thailand following the Indian Ocean Tsunamis of 26 December 2004).

Causes and Consequences of Personnel Postings in the Australian Defence Force The audit arose from a Defence Efficiency Review (1997) recommendation that Defence could make savings on the large volume of postings it made every year. The audit examined the posting process and sought to provide assurance that Defence had identified and examined salient postings issues and was addressing them effectively.

Networking the Nation was established with effect from 1 July 1997 to support activities and projects designed to meet a range of telecommunications needs in regional, rural and remote Australia. Funding is provided by the Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. The program provides total support of $250 million, of which $50 million was to be allocated annually for the five year period from 1997-98. Funding decisions for grants are the responsibility of an independent Board appointed by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. The objectives of the audit were to examine the administration of the program with a view to ascertaining the scope for improving administration and to provide assurance on the equity, efficiency and effectiveness of the management and administrative processes applied in the administration of grants under the program.

The objective of the audit is to assess the effectiveness of the ATO's administration of debt collection. Micro-business debt is a particular focus of attention. The three key areas examined are:

• strategies–especially the ATO's initiatives trialled in 2006;
• infrastructure–the IT systems, people, policy and processes and risk management framework supporting the collection of debt; and
• management and governance–planning, monitoring and reporting mechanisms and liaison with stakeholders.

The ANAO focused on the work of the campaigns area within the Debt Line, which has collection responsibility for 90 per cent of collectable debt cases and responsibility for other key, centralised functions such as reporting, quality assurance review, consistency and best practice, and the debt collection initiatives.

The objective of the audit was to assess the effectiveness of the Bureau of Meteorology’s implementation of the Improving Water Information Program.

The audit was conducted as a joint financial statement and performance audit of DVA's Information Technology (IT) systems. The objective of the financial statement component of the audit was to express an opinion on whether DVA could rely on its IT systems to support production of a reliable set of financial information for the financial statements. The objective of the performance audit component was to determine whether DVA's IT systems outputs adequately met quality and service delivery targets.