We invest in capabilities that enable our agency to be agile and adapt to scheme or policy changes. This allows us to develop our people, processes, and system capabilities in line with our strategic direction. Our administration needs to be robust and fair to underpin market confidence and participation.
We aim to be a practical, grounded, quick and commercially savvy regulator. We hold a wealth of data and information which is useful for enabling vibrant carbon markets to function well and valuable for informing policy development. Our data must be accessible, useful and accepted as a source of truth.
Maintaining a capable, agile and high performing workforce is critical to our success. Also important is the open and collaborative relationships we have with the department, state and territory government bodies, industry and other stakeholders.
Culture
Our culture and values shape the way we interact and engage with each other within the CER. They guide how we create a positive and supportive working environment, how we work with our participants and stakeholders to build and maintain trusted relationships, and our approach in responding to challenges and opportunities in our environment. Every team member contributes to the values, principles and behaviours that are elements of our culture.
We have distilled these into four cultural anchors that represent the ideals we strive for and form the way we work together. The four cultural anchors, internal to the agency are:
- Delivering outcomes: Our people care about delivering agency objectives because our purpose matters.
- Trust and accountability: Our people trust each other because we are accountable for our actions.
- Role clarity: Our people know who does what because role clarity is vital for productive collaboration.
- Active development: Our people actively develop themselves and others because lifting capability makes a difference.
Capability
We are dedicated to building capability to capitalise upon opportunities to improve and future-proof the agency. Investments in our people ensure we have the right mix of capabilities and aptitudes to meet current and future requirements. Our workforce planning recognises the opportunities technology improvements can provide to upskill our workforce and use our people for the more complex tasks.
Our People Capability Framework provides a common and accessible language about agency capability that allows us to target learning and development training for maximum benefit and informs job and organisational design. The CER will use data about our people's capability to inform workforce management and planning decisions as the framework matures.
In 2023-24, the CER achieved the conversion of all outsourced labour in the Compliance and Regulation Job Family. Significant progress was also made across the agency with outsourced labour reducing from 29% of total headcount in July 2023 to 18% of headcount in June 2024.
In 2024-25, the CER will continue to look for opportunities to reduce outsourcing of core work in line with the APS Strategic Commissioning Framework. Our targets for 2024-25 focus on reduced outsourcing of ICT and Digital Solutions and Data and Research work, with an expected reduction of $1.1million in 2024-25 in outsourcing expenditure.
Our performance
The CER is committed to being transparent and accountable for the regulatory functions that we undertake on behalf of the government and adhering to the Regulator Performance Guidelines (RMG128):
- Continuous improvement and building trust: regulators adopt a whole-of-system perspective, continuously improving their performance, capability and culture to build trust and confidence in Australia's regulatory settings.
- Risk based and data driven: regulators manage risks proportionately and maintain essential safeguards while minimising regulatory burden, and leveraging data and digital technology to support those they regulate to comply and grow.
- Collaboration and engagement: regulators are transparent and responsive communicators, implementing regulations in a modern and collaborative way.
The agency's performance in achieving our purpose and meeting these guidelines is measured through the agency's Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Framework. The framework provides a structure for monitoring, assessing and reporting on our performance.
The KPI Framework has been developed to represent external outcomes and includes quantitative and qualitative performance indicators which measure and report on the CER's performance against its purpose, objectives and planning priorities. This provides a clear line of sight between the agency's planning and reporting frameworks. Targets have been set for those performance indicators that use quantitative data as a measure of performance.
The KPI Framework is reviewed and updated with each planning cycle to ensure that our performance indicators best capture agency performance based on refinements to our reporting maturity and changes in the agency's operational environment. In line with the performance reporting requirements under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Rule 2014, our performance information also outlines the mix of different types of performance indicators to provide a more complete view of our performance, as shown in the graph below.
Results against the performance indicators are reported in the CER Annual Performance Statement, which is included in the CER Annual Report.
Types of performance measures for 2024-28
- Qualitative (5)
- Quantitative (10)
- Output (2)
- Efficiency (4)
- Effectiveness (9)