Annual Report 2007 
Director's Report
In my last report, I focused a lot on the work we were doing in building a replacement grant system, described the processes we were using to do the building work, and anticipated that we expected to produce it at the end of calendar 2006. As those of you who do business with us already know, we eventually introduced it at the beginning of the current financial year, on 2 July 2007. It is worth re-emphasising some of the points I made about our new system and the need for it, and the background to our project.
Legal Aid bodies across Australasia have been grappling with the idea of a new IT system for grants of aid for just on 5 years. An attempt to create a new national system that could be used by all the legal aid bodies eventually foundered on the rocks of complexity and cost. As any consultant worth their salt will tell you, before beginning to build an IT system, devote time and careful attention to thinking about business process.
At the Commission, we make no bones about having the simplest and most straightforward business process of all the legal aid bodies. We drive our colleagues in other jurisdictions to distraction with our proselytising, and to throwing their hands up in the air at our results. Tasmania was the first legal aid commission to introduce 100% lodgement of applications for grants of legal assistance through electronic means. We did that at the beginning of 2001. Six years later we are still the only commission that has done that.
Because all the applications come to us electronically, and because we have a very simple approach to processing them, our decisions on grants of aid are made quickly and inexpensively. The national key performance indicators for these functions include the percentage of grant requests dealt with within 5 days of receipt, and the cost of processing the requests as a proportion of the value of the assistance granted. Tasmania measures itself on whether or not we fall below 99.75% of applications dealt with within one day. And we consistently find that our cost as a proportion of the value of the aid granted is the lowest in the country by far, coming roughly to half that of our nearest competitor.
Not to forget the fact that when the pro-forma invoices are returned electronically to us, we pay them electronically within 1 working day.
The system we have been using to do this is old and its life is becoming more and more limited. So we have had to look at change, and the introduction of a new system. And as part of that, without losing any of the benefits already gained, how can we make it better?
As I reported last year, we have been working with a firm called Visualfiles, which produces a practice management system. The system is immensely configurable, and we had done some investigation into some of the uses to which it has been put in other jurisdictions. We were convinced that the system could be an excellent foundation for a new grants processing system, and have been working with Visualfiles for over a year to achieve that. Most of the development work has, in fact, been undertaken by the Commission's own IT team. Not only does this show how seriously skilled they are, it also means that the Commission will have some intellectual property in the finished product.
Our whole approach has been that the system must provide more benefits than our current set-up, and be more user friendly. We think we have achieved that.
We have been doing a lot of work on the Legal Aid application form. We wanted to make it easier and more logical to use, to automate any of it that can be (for example if the aid applicant is already a client of your firm the form will automatically fill in a number of basic data fields) and to provide added administrative efficiencies, both to your firm and to us.
We pay a lot of attention at the Commission to good, well planned IT. That is because good systems minimise overhead, and allow a greater proportion of the funding we get from taxpayers to go directly to service. So we are even more pleased that this whole project not only had, for a major IT system a ludicrously small budget, but we have come in under it.
I reported last year on the very significant impact the Legal Practitioners' Agreement had on our staffing costs, and the way in which the State government funding had included an additional component in our base funding to supplement that increase. That has allowed us to take some very positive steps this year in expanding the services we offer to the Tasmanian community. In 2001, under financial pressure, we had to impose some limitations on the representation we provide in criminal matters. It gave the Commission great pleasure this year to be able to remove those limitations.
They included:
In addition, the Commission was able to introduce some limited assistance for representation in State civil matters. The Commission had not given aid in those matters since 1999, again, due to financial pressures. We had to fit the new civil matters aid alongside the operation of our Civil Disbursement Fund, so the Commission decided that where a civil matter was likely to have as its end result an award of damages, that matter should be directed to the Fund. Other matters could be eligible for a grant of aid.
In 2001, the Commission introduced a guideline which allowed it to not grant aid on the basis of limited funds. For some years after its introduction, that guideline received regular application, initially in Family Law, but then in Criminal Law matters as well. As a result of our finances beginning to improve under the arrangements for funding in the current Commonwealth/State Agreement for Legal Aid Funding, and as a result of the increasing levels of support in funding from the Tasmanian government, the Commission takes real pride in being able to report that the guideline has not been applied once in the whole of the financial year under report.
The Commission operates on cautious fiscal and budgetary strategies, partly because of its experience with not being able to do so, in the late 90's and early years of this century. Given that financial context, and given that our types and mix of services would require major funder initiatives to significantly change, the Commission's principal focus for a number of years has been on insuring "that legal aid is provided in the most effective, efficient and economical manner" (section 6 (2)(b) Legal Aid Commission Act 1990).
However, in the last couple of years this approach has been somewhat altered by two factors. The first is that our financial caution has led to the Commission holding reserves a little higher than we think is appropriate, and so the Commission has adopted a current budget strategy of aiming at some deficit for a few years. The second is the increasing willingness of both our funders to make grants of funding to the Commission for specific purposes. On the Commonwealth side, we have had the family duty lawyer scheme, the private practitioner fees increase component, and right at the end of this financial year, some budget initiatives for 2007/2008 involving child support administrative appeals, and possible grants for enhancing private practitioner accessing in regional and remote areas. On the State side, we have had Safe at Home, the mental health initiative and private practitioner fees increase.
Under the agreement between the Commonwealth and the State of Tasmania, the Commission undertook to increase fees paid to private practitioners for legal aid work to a basis of $120 per hour before the end of the agreement in December 2008. In accordance with that, for 2006/2007 private practitioner fees were set on a basis of $115 per hour. Toward the end of the financial year, the Commission agreed to set those fees for 2007/2008 on the basis of $125 per hour. The Commission recognises that sufficient funding from both the Commonwealth and the Tasmanian government has been available to allow it to contemplate bringing in a result better than the minimum requirement set out in the Agreement.
Our overriding objectives give rise to a number of continuing strategies:
At Easter this year, just before the Hobart Magistrates Court took its Easter break, our Hobart criminal practice received a very nice public compliment from Magistrate Mollard, speaking not just for himself but also for his colleagues. He complimented them on their helpfulness, their practical skill and their commitment. While our lawyers will, from time to time, individually receive a comment from the bench in an individual case, it is not common for a whole section of our practice to be publicly thanked. While the comments were particularly directed to the Hobart practice, the Commission knows that they can be equally applied to all our practice. The lawyers working in the Commission's practice do a sterling job for their clients, and it's nice to be able to close my report by noting such a public recognition of the work they do.
NORMAN S REABURN
DIRECTOR