We review service delivery measures each year to ensure key products or services are represented in our measures and that they are balanced, meaningful to customers and reflect the operating environment. Measures focus on the quality, timeliness and cost of services. They are a commitment of what we will deliver with the funding provided.
Quality
We monitor the quality of our rulings reports, adjudication reports and public items produced to ensure they meet the standards required. We evaluate whether we have met the standards by reviewing a random sample of 25% of each report type. Reviews consider whether the contents of reports and items meet the applicable purpose, logic, alternatives, consultation and practicality standards—for instance, that templates include overt consideration of alternative arguments raised and consideration of consultation comments.
Reviews are completed by senior staff members who were not involved in processing the adjudication, ruling or public item.
Timeliness
Timeliness in responding to customer activities is an important part of our role to make it easy for customers to meet their tax obligations and receive their entitlements. Measures cover key activities such as customer registrations, processing returns and payments, answering customer queries, managing debt and unfiled returns and providing rulings and advice.
Cost
A number of cost-based measures in our PMF demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of our activities. We allocate costs to business services, appropriations and products. Cost allocations include 2 components:
- Direct allocations, where activities contribute directly to an appropriation or category and can be mapped directly to one or more business services. Direct costs are allocated based on judgments by business group representatives. These are reviewed regularly during the year.
- Indirect allocations, where cost centres do not contribute directly to an appropriation or category and cannot be linked directly to a business service. The allocation rule for these is based on the weighting of ‘direct allocations’ for the direct cost centres that this indirect cost centre is aligned to.
We review direct allocation rates at least twice a year to ensure that the existing allocations for an individual cost centre accurately reflect how cost centres expend effort.