News Flash

The recent Administration and Support Services review and restructure has resulted in a cost blow out of approximately $10,000 per month. DCS are continually relying on agency staff to fill vacancies created by the centralisation and rationalisation of administration and support service staff across all regions. This is consistent with observations and feedback received by the PSA.

The PSA has continually raised issues regarding administration and support service staffing as a result of the review and restructure, however these concerns have not been adequately addressed.

The rationalisation of services and loss of full time positions has resulted in DCS relying on agencies such as Westaff to meet the demand of both the Custodial and Community Corrections directorates. DCS has reduced service delivery to meet the reduced staffing. This has resulted in some areas such as stores closing due to lack of resources. In other examples operational and professional staff are being required to perform administration and support service roles instead of managing offenders and operations. 

The PSA recently met with Minister Rankine and tabled a range of current DCS issues including under resourcing of the Business Centre/Hub initiative. It is now clear that the Business Centres have not resulted in best practice. The money spent on third party agency providers should be allocated to funded full time positions.

28 November 2011