pursuing a range of daily informal and formal activities to meet the needs of their constituents and clients, but current reporting arrangements do not generally collect information on this activity. Conversely, under the current reporting arrangements, it is possible for some Aboriginal organisations to be judged effective in terms of upward accountability requirements, despite their clients and constituents being deeply dissatisfied with their performance. Local policies and activities are needed to operationalise downward accountability, including community reporting, newsletters, public meetings, local radio, grievance mechanisms and open door policies. The cost of such activities needs to be recognised, through some form of core funding and/or built into funded outputs of service provision contracts. While a balanced scorecard model might reduce funds available for direct service delivery, the value generated by building the capacity of community-controlled Aboriginal organisations will likely more than offset the cost. In fact, over time, a local organisation with growing capability could be expected to exceed the service quality levels achievable by a non-local organisation with tenuous roots in the community. A growing local organisation may also be able to scale up to deliver multiple services, thereby addressing the current problem of multiple external service providers delivering uncoordinated services with varying degrees of effectiveness. A report of the Australian National Audit Office finds that building the role and capacity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations is not only important for effective service delivery, but is an important policy objective in its own right in so far as it promotes local governance, leadership and economic participation, and building social capital for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.86 Where no Aboriginal community-controlled organisation currently exists to take on a service contract, interventions can be framed to grow or create that capability. The inclusion of a funded output related to Aboriginal community capacity-building ensures a non-local organisation is resourced to undertake a skills transfer in the manner envisaged by the Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory’s (APO NT) Partnership Principles.87 Currently, government service agreements for non-Aboriginal service providers typically require some form of community engagement or capacity-building, such as establishing a local reference group of Elders. However these activities are often tokenistic as they are identified as a process of engagement rather than as an end point to achieving self-determination.88
Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory
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