The organisation that costed the Coalition's promises during the 2013 election is racing to install special software ahead of the next election, with costing requests now flooding in at a rate more than 20 a week.
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The Parliamentary Budget Office confidentially calculates the cost of policies developed by parties throughout the parliamentary cycle. It also costs election promises during the weeks between the issue of writs and each election – the caretaker period – and makes the results public.
The Audit Office recently noted the Coalition's "tactical" decision to submit most of its 500 policies to the PBO just two days before the issue of writs in 2013 in order to ensure they remained confidential as it quoted the headline figures without releasing the calculations on which they were based.
Meanwhile the PBO has been using spreadsheets to keep track of the more than 1900 requests it has received since the last election.
It has now released a tender for an "automated central workflow" system to keep track of requests for information and election commitments. It wants the new system in place by December 2015, and well before the next federal election, which must be held by January 14, 2017.
"The existing manual process creates duplicate and inconsistent workflows," the tender documents say. The audit of the PBO found its use of spreadsheets to keep track of requests led to confusion among its staff and those of other departments.
The tender process reveals for the first time the procedures that maintain the PBO's independence and avoid exploitation by politicians. They include strict Secret Squirrel-like instructions for PBO staff to hand-deliver completed work, lest it fall into enemy hands.
"Costing responses are to be put into an addressed envelope (double enveloped and the internal envelope marked "Sensitive") and hand-delivered to the requesting parliamentarian or a nominated member of their staff," the procedures state.
Electronic versions could be sent, but only in a format that could not be changed by the politicians or their staff. And PBO staff must not reveal whose request or what kind of policy they were working on when approaching a government department for information. This was to ensure government staff did not find out about opposition policies.
The office was set up by the former Labor government in July 2012 so that all politicians could get access to independent costings, whether they were in the government, opposition or minor parties. The government retains access to Treasury and Finance staff for costings up until each election is called.
