Corporate Services & Law overview 2012-13

Download the Corporate Services & Law overview (NAT 73058, PDF, 536KB).

Front row: Jennie Granger, Michael Monaghan, Debbie Hastings, Frances Cawthra
Back row: Andrew England, Greg Hollyman, Brett Martin, Shane Reardon

Key message

Corporate Services and Law (CS&L) is now in its third year. The sub-plan plays a key role in leading, supporting and assuring the ATO is a contemporary and professional organisation.

In 2012-13, everyone in CS&L will need to:

• make sense of our context and environment, think about the future and anticipate rather than react
• improve productivity
• demonstrate expertise and enhance professionalism, capitalise on our experiences and uphold standards
• relate to our clients and stakeholders, listen to and appreciate their business perspectives and needs
• increase collaboration to achieve a holistic approach across the sub-plan and the ATO
• continue to use analysis and differentiation
• break through with innovative solutions.

The Executive leadership team has changed, with Shane Reardon (FAC ATOP), Frances Cawthra (CFO) and Greg Hollyman (CIA) joining Andrew England (CTC), Debbie Hastings (FAC L&P), Brett Martin (GM AVO), Michael Monaghan (FAC CR) and Jennie Granger (Second Commissioner).

The Executive team would like to thank you in anticipation of your efforts this year. We look forward to working with you to meet these challenges and make the most of the opportunities, and to put in place sustainable solutions for the ATO, the community and the government.

Our role

We bring to life some very important responsibilities of the Commissioner. As custodians of the ATO view, we interpret taxation and superannuation laws, and maintain key corporate relationships with our people, the government and other government agencies.

Our strategic direction

We will continue on our journey toward the vision where Australians value their tax and superannuation systems as assets, and participation is the hallmark of good citizenship.

In CS&L, we contribute to the delivery of the programs and services that underpin Australia's taxation and superannuation system. This includes:

• working on precedents in law, and advising and shaping law design
• delivering the ATO's offer as an employer
• ensuring offices are safe, professional and contemporary work spaces
• maintaining strong relationships with ministers
• maintaining a productive and collaborative relationship with scrutineers
• engaging with media and leveraging media channels
• continuing to drive strong financial results
• enabling business to deliver on outcomes.

The Commissioner and our colleagues expect us to work with them and on their behalf to:

Governance

• cut red tape, and streamline planning and reporting processes
• provide insightful reporting and analysis
• maintain our good financial management record
• improve complaints management and treatment, including understanding the drivers influencing them.

Working with Treasury

• improve the rigour and comprehensiveness of the revenue-costing processes
• actively influence legislative design and clarification of the law
• enhance new policy-design working arrangements
• meet growing expectations to support policy and legislative-design work.

Communication and reputation management

• collaborate with the Information Commissioner to publish ATO operational information that is accessible and useful
• simplify and improve our communication, writing for the world to see and understand
• continue to improve transparency and provide insight into statistical trends in tax and superannuation litigation
• improve our website and its capability as a primary interface with the community
• keep pace with technological advances, community practices in communications and information sharing
• develop and implement an appropriate and effective cross-agency super-reform education and advertising campaign
• increase recognition of the AVO brand.

Law

• implement the transitional law structure with a progressive shift to the new Office of Chief Tax Counsel
• develop a credible and feasible dispute management plan that links our performance with dispute resolution
• manage litigation, addressing challenges arising from adverse decisions and changing judicial interpretation
• have the right balance between knowledge and application of expertise in law interpretation and auditing; demonstrating these with commercial acumen.

Valuation

• provide an effective, competitively-neutral valuation service for government and other clients
• implement the NOVA system to meet both current and future needs
• continue to improve client satisfaction and levels of service delivery in identified areas
• continue to mitigate dependence on existing government client groups and build capability to respond to perceived gaps in the market.

People

• implement the revised people strategy
• focus attention on areas highlighted in engagement survey and continue to develop layered and differentiated approaches
• demonstrate purposeful and visible site leadership which goes beyond social activities
• develop future capability potential by broadening our employee base and unblocking career paths through the review of our classification structure
• address issues raised by community and government about management of whistleblowing, bullying and harassment
• ensure high quality, safe and healthy workplaces, providing contemporary accommodation and implement new workplace health and safety legislation
• implement significantly refreshed leadership development programs aligned to the Australian Public Service Commission's 'Knowing-Doing-Being' leadership framework
• understand and measure effectiveness of learning and development.

In the coming year, we will need to meet a wide variety of challenges across all areas of CS&L. Some of these will be hard and we will have to draw on our individual and collective wisdom, energy and resilience to sustain and improve performance. We have, over the previous two years, established a solid foundation from which CS&L can continue to support the ATO, the community and the government.

Our work at a glance

Key facts and figures 2011-12 (at 31 May 2012):

• finalised 12 priority technical issues and issued 33 draft and 35 final public rulings
• managed 163 policy projects through the Policy Implementation Forum
• completed 273 revenue costings
• finalised 5,275 litigation cases
• published 8,613 documents including 1,938 new products to ato.gov.au
• answered 659 media enquiries, arranged 37 interviews, wrote 15 speeches and 16 articles, issued 35 media releases and three Commissioner's online updates
• sent 305 minutes to the Minister, answered 464 Questions on Notice, sent 74 Question Time Briefs to the Minister and managed approximately 620 responses to ministerial correspondence
• Ombudsman - finalised 179 investigations, 32 review requests,
• 498 investigation briefs and 146 status requests
• participated in four ANAO audits and four Inspector-General of Taxation reviews
• completed over 87,407 valuations and 35,826 related searches and assessments
• processed 60,353 payments of accounts
• renewed 13 property leases, negotiated two agreements for lease and consolidated five sites into one new Melbourne CBD site
• made 855,000 salary payments totalling $1,207,260,729
• processed 6,203 employee commencements, including 255 graduates, 1,695 promotions and 9,300 transfers
• provided 5,903 individual training events to 144,399 participants
• completed 6,885 pre-engagement clearances.

Our people

We optimise our knowledge and expertise to ensure we can most benefit the ATO across our range of disciplines. Our people are experts in law, accounting, valuation, governance, graphic design, dispute resolution, financial services and analysis, marketing and communications, research and metrics, education, people management and property management.

Our people by line

Line	Percentage of FTE
ATO People	39%
Law & Practice	22.4%
Corporate Relations	14.2%
ATO Finance	15.4%
Australian Valuation Office	7.4%
Office of the Commissioners	1.6%

Where we are

(Figures at 31 May 2012)

ACT	29.7%
NSW	23.3%
VIC	22.3%
QLD	13.9%
SA	5.3%
WA	3.6%
TAS	1.7%
NT	0.2%

Our resources

Budget	$666.1 million at 28 May 2012
Workforce	2,629 FTE at 31 May 2012
Key capabilities	Accounting and finance Administration Analytics and intelligence Auditing Communication and marketing Customer service Enforcement and investigation Human resources management Information and organisation professionals Information technology Law Management Valuation
Locations	31 sites across Australia