Users' Guide

The 1997-1998 Portfolio Budget Statements, informs Senators and Members of Parliament of the proposed allocation of resources to portfolios outcomes and their objectives and targets including the agencies within the Health and Family Services portfolio.

In this section:

Portfolio Budget Statements (PBS) are a major public source of information on Government programs and budgets.

They are designed to give Parliament and the public a close look at what Government programs are intended to achieve, how much they cost, and what changes the Government is going to make.

Yet they are not used as widely as they could be. And they are not famous for being 'user friendly'!

In this year's PBS, the Department has introduced a number of changes to try to make the document more 9user friendly' for all readers and to assist Members of Parliament to more readily find and link the information they need.

The overall structure is designed to make the information flow logically. The following diagram shows how this works.

Making the information flow more logically

The PBS is structured so that it steps you through the following levels in order:

The 'big picture'

Portfolio Mission, Ministerial responsibilities, an overview of what the Portfolio aims to achieve in the year ahead, and program structure.

then...

The dollars

A cluster of Portfolio Tables which provide all the financial details of the Government's Budget measures and how these affect overall Program expenditure for the 1997-98 financial year and the three following years.

then...

The details

What the individual programs will do and how the Budget will affect them -- the Program Analysis section. Here the Budget measures are described in more detail and each program describes what it is aiming to achieve and how its performance will be assessed.

then...

Appendices

A glossary of terms at the back of the book to help you crack the bureaucratic jargon, and other useful background information.

Finding your way around

The "How do I Find ....?" table provides a quick guide to where you can find the answers to a number of frequently asked questions.

Is the portfolio doing a good job?

The PBS tells part of the story about whether the Portfolio is doing a good job. It describes how performance will be measured in 1997-98. The other part of the story will be found at the end of the year in the Annual Report, where the Department reports against the commitments made in the PBS. (Some Portfolio agencies report separately through their own Annual Reports.)

This year the PBS shows performance indicators in tables with increased emphasis on targets, data sources and reporting frequency.

Some programs, such as Therapeutic Goods, have direct control over service delivery. For these precise targets can be set. Where services are delivered through the States and Territories, or where the Government has not set macro-level quantitative targets, targets cannot always be set down.

Monitoring performance against indicators and targets provides only part of the picture for assessing programs. Evaluations are also needed to review program outcomes more fundamentally. Major evaluations planned are listed in the PBS.