The Victorian Government's spending on major projects has increased each year for the last decade. It is important that Parliament and the community have transparent and meaningful information about project progress so they can hold government and public entities accountable for their projects’ performance.

The 113 major projects we examined are worth $145.5 billion in total. There are 9 new projects, 91 existing projects and 13 completed projects. Three of these projects did not have a confirmed TEI.

Covered in this section:

We made 6 recommendations to address our 4 key findings. The relevant entities have accepted the recommendations in full or in principle. The Department of Health and the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP), also representing the Suburban Rail Loop Authority (SRLA) and the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority (VIDA), do not agree that 2 recommendations are relevant to them and believe that DTF is the appropriate entity to action them.

What we examined

Our review followed one line of inquiry:

1. Are public entities transparently reporting the performance of their major projects against cost, time, scope and benefits?

To answer this question, we surveyed 15 of the 19 entities in scope for this review and examined 113 selected major projects.

Appendix A lists agencies’ formal letters of response to this review along with their recommendation action plans. Appendix G contains the entity responses to our survey.

Download a PDF copy of Appendix D: Agency progress updates on our recommendations.

Download a PDF copy of Appendix C: Review scope and method.

Download a PDF copy of Appendix B: Abbreviations, acronyms and glossary.

Download a PDF copy of Appendix A: Submissions and comments.

Audited councils accepted 4 of our recommendations from 2019 in full and one in part.

Baw Baw, Casey and Moonee Valley completed all their agreed actions in response to our recommendations, while Queenscliffe and Horsham completed 4 of their agreed actions and still need to complete 2 of their agreed actions.

Only Casey and Queenscliffe set target dates for their agreed actions. Both experienced some delays due to organisational changes or constraints. 

LGV accepted 3 of our recommendations from 2019 in full and 2 in part. It completed 4 of its 5 agreed actions but missed target dates for 3 agreed actions due to the impacts of COVID-19, Victorian bushfires and the introduction of the Act in 2020. It has not completed its agreed action to expand the benchmarking capability on the KYC website.

LGV’s agreed actions to align LGPRF data with other state agencies and investigate how LGPRF indicators can better reflect the full costs, quality, appropriateness and outcomes of council services only partially address our recommendations.

What we examined

Our review followed 2 lines of inquiry: 

1. progress in implementing actions agreed in response to our 2019 recommendations

2. causes of delay in implementing recommendations, where applicable.

To assess this, we examined the 6 entities we audited in our 2019 engagement: