Government Office Accommodation Reform Program Overview

The New South Wales Government occupies more than one million square metres of office accommodation with an annual rental exceeding $300 million a year.

The Office Accommodation Reform Program is an integral part of the Government's larger reform agenda and offers an excellent opportunity to achieve savings without reducing staff numbers or the level and quality of services delivered to the people of New South Wales.

The Reform Program has been evolving now for several years.

It began in 1995 with the development of a range of reforms aimed at introducing best practice procedures into the public sector's management of property, achieving savings, promoting a coordinated whole-of-government approach to accommodation planning and property disposal and focussing agencies on the amount of space they were using.

Government endorsed these reforms in September 1996 and they were communicated to agencies in Premier's Memorandum 97-2 in February 1997. This is regarded as Stage I of the Reform Program and established what is referred to as the management framework.

The Premier's Memorandum gave the former Department of Public Works and Services (DPWS), now the Department of Commerce, the responsibility for coordinating the leasing of office space across NSW. It also introduced new requirements for the preparation of facility plans when accommodation was being acquired.

PM 97-2 also announced the Government's space utilisation target of 18m2 per person as an agency portfolio average.

It also introduced the requirement for agencies to prepare an annual Office Accommodation Strategy (OAS) as part of their overall asset strategy. The OAS was to be submitted to DPWS for review and preparation of a consolidated report to the Government Asset Management Committee (GAMC) and the Budget Committee of Cabinet.

When Government approved these reforms in 1996, it also requested that DPWS develop a comprehensive masterplan for Government accommodation and property.

This became Stage II of the Reform Program that was endorsed by Government in June 1998 and announced in Premier's Memorandum 99-6 in February 1999. This stage is referred to as the Direction Setting stage.

These reforms comprised 12 key strategies aimed at improving asset and accommodation management across Government.

The first and probably most significant strategy was the establishment of the GAMC to oversight the continued implementation of the reforms. The GAMC is chaired by Col Gellatly (Premier's Department) and the other current members include John Pierce (Treasury), Kate McKenzie (Department of Commerce), Laurie Glanfield (Attorney General's Department), Paul Forward (Roads and Traffic Authority) and Peter Duncan (State Forests).

The GAMC's terms of reference include:

• The alignment of asset and office accommodation resources with Government's service delivery priorities.
• The appropriateness of agency asset management strategies.
• Strategic asset and accommodation issues involving more than one agency.
• Regional office accommodation strategies and plans (including Sydney CBD).
• Major investment strategies - acquisition, major refurbishments, lease pre-commitments, leasehold, and asset and property disposals.
• Benchmarks and performance standards for asset and property portfolios.

The GAMC has facilitated several major initiatives including a number of regional relocations and the release last year of the revised Total Asset Management Manual.

One major initiative was CBD Core Strategy that involved the relocation of a number of groups from Governor Macquarie Tower to either Government owned premises or significantly less costly accommodation in the CBD South precinct. This strategy was completed in 2002 and will save the Government in the order of $25 million over 10 years.

To find out more about GAMC's activities visit its website at www.gamc.nsw.gov.au.

Other strategies of Stage II of the Reform Program include:

• Investment decisions, that is, whether Government should own or lease office buildings
• The location of office space, with the Sydney CBD South and Parramatta being nominated as preferred locations for agencies that need to be in the Sydney Metropolitan area
• The introduction of a requirement for any agency wanting to lease space in the high cost CBD Core to have a business case endorsed by the GAMC confirming their need to be in that location.
• A requirement for agencies to regularly conduct a regional viability test to determine whether all or parts of their organisation could be relocated to a regional area. The promotion of regional development through agency relocations remains a high priority for Government.
• Reaffirmation of the agency average space use target of 18m2 per person and introduction of a new target of 15m2 per person for all new fitouts. This new target recognised that not all accommodation could achieve the 18m2 density and some would therefore need to be less than that.
• Agency collocations to enable sharing of resources and lease rationalisation to maximise purchasing power.

The next stage of the Reform Program, referred to as the Transaction Management phase, is still in progress. The first part relating to leasing reforms was announced in Premier's Memorandum 2002-09 and became effective from 1 July 2002. Detailed information about these reforms is available in the Publications page of the GAMC website.

If you would like more information about the Reform Program or feel there are aspects of accommodation or property management that could be improved please contact us through the Feedback section of this site.

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