A Victorian Auditor-General's report into the state's Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) has found weaknesses in information management and the lack of a functional overarching information strategy.

Auditor-General John Doyle said, "In recent years, my office has undertaken a range of audits to determine the adequacy of public sector performance reporting.

"My office's work within the department over the past three years has raised doubts about the reliability of some information, and more significantly, about how well information is valued and used to drive better services and better outcomes for Victorians.

"In this audit, I looked at the department's overall approach to managing performance information and examined the processes and controls applied to six of its information systems. Collectively, these systems provide data for more than half of the department's output targets each year.

"I have gained assurance that the majority are soundly managed—of the six systems we examined, four had fundamentally sound processes and controls, but there were multiple weaknesses in the other two. However, the department has operated for several years without a strategy to guide its information management practices. This has resulted in some inconsistencies in the way it manages information and has limited its ability to drive improvements in how information is valued, managed and used.

"Encouragingly, the department has been working throughout the course of this audit to develop a new information strategy."

DEECD is Victoria's main education agency. It is a large organisation, with six divisions spread across three portfolios and it manages an annual budget of $11.5 billion. It oversees the delivery of learning and development services to almost two million Victorians each year.

Some of the issues it identified included:

1. inconsistent data collection methods and controls that have led to the reliability of some data being compromised
2. lack of information transfer between the early childhood and school sectors
3. lack of access to, or use of, important data in a range of different areas.

The report notes, " Despite its service responsibilities commencing at birth, it does not have a unique identifier for individuals that carries information related to their progress from early childhood services to schools and then onwards to further education. While the links between school and post-compulsory education are more established, data collected on young people before they enter school is not automatically transferred, and therefore can be lost as they transition.

"We see potential for DEECD to extend the use of the Victorian Student Number (VSN) to facilitate this kind of analysis. The VSN currently allows individuals' progress to be monitored across the school and post-compulsory education sectors, but does not apply before school and ceases at 24 years of age.

"DEECD is undertaking important work to invest in early years programs. However, by not tracking individuals over time, or effectively linking information between the different education sectors, it does not have an opportunity to fully understand the impact of its work over an extended period of time. This needs to change for the department to genuinely understand the outcomes of the $11.5 billion it spends each year."

Maternal and Child Health

One of the key information system weaknesses identified was in the system that captures maternal and child health (MCH) data from local government maternal and child health services.

The 79 local government authorities in Victoria operate MCH services, but DEECD provides 50 per cent of total funding. MCH services collect a wide range of information about infants and young children and use this information for case management. 

"DEECD relies on this information to fund MCH services, but does little to verify and validate the data, and does not enforce consistent data definitions. Therefore, it has no assurance that the data it is basing its funding decisions on is accurate," the report found.

"DEECD only has access to a very limited selection of the data collated by MCH services. Without access to the broader data, DEECD can't effectively evaluate the services being provided on its behalf. It also has limited information that it can analyse and feed back to the MCH services to assist them in their role.

Specific issues include:

each MCH service uses one of three programs to house the information it collects and DEECD does not have direct access to or control over these systems—this creates inefficiencies and, without full access, limits DEECD's ability to undertake meaningful analysis of data

1. high levels of manual data entry—increasing the risk that data is entered incorrectly and casting doubts on the reliability of data
2. inconsistencies in data definitions—leading to different MCH services recording the same information in different ways
3. minimal verification and no validation of data—meaning DEECD cannot be assured that it is reliable and accurate.

DEECD has acknowledged that there are issues with how it manages information and is taking steps to address these issues. It recently developed a new ICT strategy, is currently developing a four-year information strategy based on whole-of-government better-practice principles, and is further developing its capability to link separate information systems through a single data repository.