Chapter 4—Management and accountability
Procurement
While the agency has a dedicated procurement officer to coordinate and advise on procurement, it operates a devolved framework that places responsibility for procurement activity with line area managers.
All procurement and purchasing activities were conducted in accordance with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines 2008 and their principles, such as value for money and encouraging competition; the Chief Executive’s Instructions; and the agency’s administrative procedures and accounting policies. All of these were available to staff online or in hard copy from the Finance Section.
Consultants are engaged when necessary expertise is unavailable within the agency, or when required specialised skills are not available without diverting resources from higher priority tasks. In accordance with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines 2008 consultants were selected by open tender, panel arrangements or select tendering.
The main areas in which consultants were engaged were heritage work, and exhibition and interpretation content development.
During 2009–10, 17 new consultancy contracts involving total actual expenditure of $189,866 (inclusive of GST) were entered into. No consultancy contracts from 2008–09 were active during 2009–10. Details of consultancies over $10,000 (GST inclusive) are in Appendix J (page 152).
Annual reports contain information about actual expenditure on contracts for consultancies. Information on the value of contracts and consultancies is available on the AusTender website, www.tenders.gov.au.
The agency’s standard contract templates include an Australian National Audit Office access clause. All contracts signed during the reporting period for $100,000 or more (GST inclusive) provided for the Auditor-General to access the contractors’ premises.
No contract for $10,000 or more (GST inclusive) was exempted by the Chief Finance Officer from publication on AusTender.