During 2018/19 we continued to refine and strengthen our planning processes in order to make our reporting outputs more robust, including ongoing improvements to our budget development and review and monitoring processes. These initiatives continue to bring together a range of corporate and communications priorities, and have contributed to robust compliance standards and reporting performance against outcomes.

In August 2018 we published our fourth Corporate (Agency) Plan for 2018/19 to 2021/22, as required under the PGPA Act. We spent much of 2018/19 implementing the plan’s strategic priorities.

We undertook a deep-dive review of the Strategic Directions in the second quarter of 2018/19. This period marked the mid-point in the Strategic Direction’s lifecycle and the review involved:

• developing a deeper understanding or ‘theory’ of AIFS’ impact pathway; that is, mapping how what we do (activity) leads to positive outcomes for children and families (impact)
• reviewing the Strategic Directions and yearly initiatives against this theory or understanding
• reviewing our performance and impact measures, specifically whether current performance measures were fit for purpose.

This review resulted in:

• an overarching ‘theory of change’ within which AIFS’ Strategic Directions and yearly initiatives are situated
• a revised performance measurement and reporting framework
• revised performance measures
• identification of priority strategic initiatives for the current year.