Governance Failures And Lessons Learned From Australian Home Insulation Program
Guiding and overseeing of the project management
Arise of global financial crisis in 2008 ruined the economic growth worldwide, it leads to unemployment in many countries including Australia. To overcome the Impact of economic downturn and to stable it with more job opportunities Australian government introduced an encouragement package in late 2008 and early 2009 with $3.9 billion Energy Efficient Homes plan. The crucial part of EEHP was $2.8 billion Home Insulation Program; the main aim of this program was to develop low skilled jobs and enhancing residential energy efficiency but this program was ended before fulfilling the desired results due to huge deficiency regarding the installation of the roof and almost 13808 roofs not installed properly, 4 deaths of employees and many fraud cases were reported. In the upcoming paragraphs I am going to shed some light on various aspects of this program such as role of governance their mistakes, factors are responsible in the failure of this project, risks were involved and what steps could had been taken to prevent all this.
I will address below three points in which I am trying to evaluate what were the government failures and how to prevent them
- Guiding and overseeing the management of project work;
- Establishing governance roles, responsibilities, and authorities;
- Monitoring performance.
The guiding and overseeing of projects management done by department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) where the process relating to project was mentioned and the working progress or the measurement taken by the project management was guided by DEWHA (Anao.gov.au, 2019). Here the guideline and the policies mentioned by the HIP do not follow which cause the damage to the landlords and the house owner of the installation process. For the management of the project HIP a project control group was created in April 2009 and connected with DEWHA. The main aim and objective of this project control group are to provide the strategic and right direction for HIP and to make sure the standards mentioned by the government should be followed by them. Guidelines mentioned by the DEWHA were at risk for the delayed in the measurement taken by Medicare Australia It was mentioned that HIP was a costly project for all outcomes mentioned for the program. Here the program paid claims to the landlord and householders of the insulation program. There is a lack of safety measurement taken by the organization which causing increasing amount for the claims (Jeston 2014). Here government failed to solve the problem regarding the low quality of insulation for ceiling installation and safety requirement for the householders and landlords. Due to the short period of the project it caused reputational damage to the other government authorities. Australian manufacturers and insulation industry face reputation damage. Government depends on the audit report for the risk management which was delayed by the authority (Homeinsulationroyalcommission.gov.au, 2019). All the problems can be solved by government if they will take proper responsibility regarding the work and they should focus on the project management and working progress by employees. DEHWA should had been introduce the compliance and audit program at first stage of program, in this way collected information could had been helped the government to take the appropriate actions to prevent from the damages of the program like safety and fraud cases (Anao.gov.au, 2019).
Rules and regulations set by the company
The rules and regulation set by the company are mentioned as the benchmark for the company (Jiang, Yan and Huang 2016) Governance responsibilities are generally defining the quality of the project, promote the quality awareness, review the business plan, promote safety awareness and review the project process. The project control group should also take responsibility for different aspects of the project which are as follows, to make sure there is enough time to complete the project and the time should be utilized properly by the employees (Verzuh 2015). The employees are failed to fill the gap between formulate the strategy and implement it, so the project is terminated for the deficiency in the security measurement. In this situation the Australian government should take the role of the authority and maintain all the responsibilities mentioned by the governance role, authorities and responsibilities. The deficiency occurs due to the low quality of the products and the safety issues (Homeinsulationroyalcommission.gov.au, 2019). Here an issue regarding fraud also occurred and the fraud was done by the HIP. Home insulation Program should evaluate the process done by them to maintain the goals which they set for the projects. In this part, the fault was made by the HIP, and they are responsible for the damages made by them, and they will have to take responsibility regarding the deficiency of the roof installation. This project was set for a short period of time which caused a short period for the job and made a bad quality in the installation. Here the monitoring process was not followed by DEWHA which causing the deficiency in the installation by the HIP. The policies and procedures can be ensured to the employees easily with different steps taken by the organization (Too and Weaver 2014). The steps should be taken to ensure the policies are, to determine the best policy for the audience, accessible procedures and policies for the employees, set the deadline for the projects and make sure it completes within the time. In this particular situation, the policies and procedure taken by the Australian government in the package for Home Insulation program are not enough to achieve the goals set by them. The main problem arises where the increased number of the claim regarding the installation is mentioned (Anao.gov.au, 2019). In this situation department focus on the risk management practice which means that the relationship between the project success and managing risk (Noe et al 2017). They rely on the audit process where the risks should be motioned, and enough measurement for the projects are provided by them, but in the audit report the risks regarding the project are not mentioned properly, and it was delayed. The department does not take the proper measurement to solve the problems which cause them deficiency in the installation program.
Performance monitoring
The performance monitoring generally used to evaluate the performance of the institution, projects, international organizations and different program set by the government. Monitoring a project by the governance can be done with the proper way. The monitoring takes place when the authority is maintaining the aims and objective of the project. It assesses the output of the project in a process so that authorities can take correct actions to solve the problem as quickly as possible (Bailey et al 2015). In this case department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) evaluate the project performance announced by the government. The government fails to achieve its goals for this particular project because the purpose and measurement introduced by the Home Insulation Program are failed due to insufficient monitoring by the government. Here government failed to identify the fraud cases and low quality of material used in installation moreover safety measures were also at risk. Government should define the accountability for every department involved in the program, in this way we can monitor the performance of every department easily and it leads to enhance the quality and performance of the program.
Conclusion
In this above discussion, it was shown that HIP is a package announced by the Australian Government to solve the issues regarding unemployment and economic turnout. This project caused several damages to the householder and the landlord relating to the insulation program of ceiling installation. The authority relating to this project makes fault by relying into audit process for risk management. DEWHA evaluate all factors regarding the projects which show the fault from Medicare Australia. Landlord and house owner of the insulation program face loss regarding the payment. This above experience mentioned the difficulty in the program design and the implementation of the program also not correct. It was a lesson for the other insulation project management to maintain the proper rules and regulations regarding the projects. The insulation program management should implement the responsibilities and develop the policy for better out come.
References
Anao.gov.au. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/default/files/ANAO_Report_2010-2011_12.pdf [Accessed 30 Mar. 2019].
Bailey, T., Bode, B.W., Christiansen, M.P., Klaff, L.J. and Alva, S., 2015. The performance and usability of a factory-calibrated flash glucose monitoring system. Diabetes technology & therapeutics, 17(11), pp.787-794.
Jeston, J., 2014. Business process management. Routledge.
Jiang, Q., Yan, X. and Huang, B., 2016. Performance-driven distributed PCA process monitoring based on fault-relevant variable selection and Bayesian inference. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 63(1), pp.377-386.
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Too, E.G. and Weaver, P., 2014. The management of project management: A conceptual framework for project governance. International Journal of Project Management, 32(8), pp.1382-1394.
Verzuh, E., 2015. The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.