Procurement

The AFP applies the Commonwealth Procurement Rules when procuring goods and services, including consultancies. The rules are applied to activities through the Commissioner’s Financial Instructions with supporting guidelines. The AFP has a centralised procurement and contracting team that actively promotes and focuses on compliance.

The AFP monitors compliance to identify any emerging issues, including breaches of official duties, processing control gaps and fraudulent activity. Activities to monitor non-compliance include regular transaction testing, the nature and extent of which is managed on a risk basis, an annual assurance review and an internal audit program. AFP Professional Standards investigates allegations of possible misconduct and fraud and may seek prosecution. Significant issues are reported to the Minister for Home Affairs and, where an issue relates to management of public resources, to the Minister for Finance. For further information on the AFP’s Professional Standards, refer to Appendix A: Professional standards and AFP conduct issues .

In 2019–20 the AFP conducted a number of tender processes, including for remediation cleaning services, supply of munitions, and health support services for Papua New Guinea.

Information on the value of contracts, including consultancies, is available at www.tenders.gov.au. The Senate Order on departmental and agency contracts is available on the AFP’s website via a link to AusTender.

In 2019–20 the AFP entered into 11 contracts of $100,000 or more which did not provide for the Auditor-General to have access to the contractor’s premises. These contracts are detailed in Table 4.2.

Consultancies

During 2019–20, 61 new consultancy contracts were entered into involving total actual expenditure of $5.51 million. In addition, 26 ongoing consultancy contracts were active during the period, involving total actual expenditure of $1.244 million.

The decisions to engage consultants are made in accordance with the PGPA Act, Commonwealth Procurement Rules and relevant internal policies where there is an identified need for specialist skills, knowledge or independent expertise in areas outside of the agency’s core business functions. The AFP takes into consideration the skills and resources required for the task, the skills available internally and the cost-effectiveness of engaging external expertise.

Annual reports contain information about actual expenditure on contracts for consultancies; information on the value of individual contracts and consultancies is available on the AusTender website.

Exempt contracts

During 2019–20, the AFP did not publish on AusTender the details of 43 contracts, with a total value of $12,298,576, as the details would disclose exempt matters under the FOI Act.

Procurement initiative to support small business

The AFP supports small business participation in the Australian Government procurement market. Small and medium enterprises and small enterprise participation statistics are available on the Department of Finance’s website.

The AFP’s procurement practices support small business enterprises by promoting, where possible, use of the Commonwealth Contracting Suite for low-risk procurements valued under $200,000, encouraging the use of credit card payments for procurements valued under $10,000 and setting the default terms of payment for small business through the accounts payable system to seven calendar days.

The AFP recognises the importance of ensuring that small businesses are paid on time. The results of the Survey of Australian Government Payments to Small Business are available on the Treasury’s website.

Discretionary grants

Information on grants that the AFP awarded during the period 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020 is available at www.grants.gov.au.

Advertising and market research

The AFP did not conduct any government advertising campaigns in 2019–20.