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More Accessible Government aims to improve access to grant programmes and streamline grant administration, with a particular focus on regional, rural and remote communities. The process involves further development of collaborative work by federal government departments to achieve these outcomes.
Grantslink is the first product of the More Accessible Government initiative. It can be visited at www.grantslink.gov.au. Information on a wide range of grants programmes is available from 15 federal government agencies. For those without internet access, an operator at a freecall number (1800 026 222) can guide them through information available on the site.
Improvements have also being made to simplify grant application forms. From December 2001, all Commonwealth grant application forms will standardise the information requested from applicants about the applicant organisation.
Future work will include investigating the standardisation of contractual arrangements; better ways to improve local access to, understanding and uptake of Commonwealth grants; and streamlined funding arrangements for joint projects.
To improve coordination of Commonwealth activities at the local level, a pilot remote communities liaison service is being trialed. Based in Longreach and servicing western Queensland, the service commenced in October 1999. It is proving effective in supporting remote communities to coordinate service delivery and funding applications. This has resulted in increased access to services such as Rural Transaction Centres and innovative solutions to child care issues in the community. The pilot is different in that the service is not tied to the support of a single programme. It provides a whole-of-government response to communities, drawn from across the Commonwealth.
The Government has committed $70 million over five years (1999-2004) for the Rural Transaction Centres (RTCs) Programme. This programme will help small, rural communities to establish centres that provide access to basic transaction services such as banking, post, phone, fax, the internet, Centrelink services and Medicare Easyclaim. Assistance may also be available to help provide access to an extended range of services unlikely to be provided commercially, such as Job Network, videoconferencing and rooms for visiting professionals.
The Federal Government has recently enhanced the programme to extend eligibility to Licensed Post Offices, to provide more Commonwealth services through RTCs, to improve linkages with State services and programmes and to appoint a field officer network.
Local communities with populations under 3,000 are expected benefiting from the programme.
The Bureau of Meteorology provides a broad range of ongoing weather and climate related forecasting and information services to regional Australia. An initiative aimed at enhancing the services to provincial cities and rural areas has been underway since 1996, with the main focus so far being improvements to the infrastructure within the Bureau's field offices so that staff can respond more effectively to local needs for information and services. In 2001-02, a further $350,000 is expected to be directed towards upgrading services of particular interest to rural areas, including the development of new forecast and information products and improved product coverage in regional Australia.
The Bureau has recently implemented new services on its web site to provide free of charge access to radar imagery from the Bureau's more than 50 radar sites and current weather information from automatic weather stations in regional areas. In 2001-02, coverage will be extended to a range of 250 kilometres from each location, which will increase significantly the regional population served.
The Bureau will increase its weather radar network with the installation of three new radars near Canberra, Yarrawonga (Victoria) and Bowen (Queensland) during 2001-02. The capital cost of these installations is about $3 million.
AUSLIG is the Government's primary source of advice on land information matters and provides Australia with its only national mapping service. AUSLIG's budget appropriation for 2001-02 is $26.7 million. AUSLIG provides fundamental geographic information to support mining, agriculture, transport, tourism and communications industries, as well as defence, education, surveillance and emergency services activities.