Introduction
The Regulator Maturity Self-Assessment Tool was developed by the Department of Finance to help regulators evaluate and improve their regulatory capability at the enterprise level. It also allows regulators to track changes to their capability over time.
The Tool helps regulators to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. This supports strategic planning and enables benchmarking against previous self-assessment results to measure progress.
What you need to know before starting
Regulators should read and be familiar with the Regulator Maturity Model and Self-Assessment User Guide before using the tool. The tool is an interactive document structured across 8 tabs.
- Tab 1 asks questions to help Finance understand the regulator’s circumstances, for example size. Tabs 2 to 7 ask questions covering the capability domains in the Regulator Maturity Model.
- Tab 8 summarises the regulator’s self-assessment ratings.
Overview
- Tab 1. About You
- Tab 2. Principle 1 - Capability domains 1.1 and 1.2
- Tab 3. Principle 2 - Capability domains 2.1 and 2.2
- Tab 4. Principle 3 - Capability domains 3.1 and 3.2
- Tab 5. Principle 4 - Capability domains 4.1 and 4.2
- Tab 6. Principle 5 - Capability domains 5.1 and 5.2
- Tab 7. Principle 6 - Capability domains 6.1 and 6.2
- Tab 8. Results Summary
Step-by-step self-assessment process
The Self-Assessment Tool prompts regulators to complete the following steps:
- Step 1. Decide on the scope of the self-assessment and who needs to be involved.
- Step 2. Gather any supporting information needed to answer the self-assessment questions.
- Step 3. Answer the self-assessment questions and determine your maturity ratings.
- Step 4. Share your results with the Department of Finance.
Although the Model and Tool are designed to be used at the enterprise level, regulators may choose to assess an individual regulatory function within a department or an area within a regulator. Whichever option you choose, it is helpful to assign responsibility to one person or team to coordinate the self-assessment. Regulators may like to have a group of staff from across different internal teams involved in performing the self-assessment to gain a greater range of perspectives.
Think about which areas within your entity or regulatory function you may need to speak to for help answering the questions. For example, teams who might be subject matter experts. You may need to collaborate across multiple teams, branches or divisions as part of answering the questions.
Consider involving colleagues from outside of your entity or regulatory function to help you complete the self-assessment. For example, colleagues from another regulator you collaborate with regularly, or another regulatory function within your department.
The perspective of other colleagues can help avoid positivity bias.
You may need additional information to answer some questions. For example, some questions ask about whether your entity or regulatory function has actioned results from other Commonwealth maturity frameworks to uplift your regulatory practices.
Other information you may need includes internal documents about education, compliance and enforcement policies or strategies and information about other tools, processes or systems that you use in your entity or regulatory function.
Think about examples to support your answers as part of self-assessing your maturity.
That is, the ‘what, how and how often’. This will help you to identify your assessment ratings as well as those areas that would benefit from further action.
Possible examples might include:
- Your actions, including the frequency that these happen.
- Whether actions occur across all levels/areas of your entity or regulatory function.
- Processes you have in place to ensure an action is happening.
- Frequency of reviewing and updating actions/arrangements you have in place.
- Who you engage with, and how and when engagement occurs.
- Evaluation processes you have in place to measure success. This might include an international evaluation process.
- Frequency of re-assessing processes, strategies or risk-based planning or targeting for your activities. For example, annually, quarterly, monthly.
- Where gaps in your regulatory system or processes have been identified, the actions you have taken in response.
- Tools or resources that you use, including those of other regulators, other Australian Government frameworks or maturity models, or other jurisdictions.
There is space in the Tool to make notes or explain context for answers, for example examples supporting the rating or why you might be unable to answer a question. You might also like to record examples of successes.
The Tool is interactive and has drop down lists of answers to choose from. The answers map to one of the 4 maturity levels. If you are unable to answer a question, you can choose “does not apply/unable to answer/assess” as the response.
- Step 1. Answer all questions for each capability domain. The Tool will record a maturity level rating for each question based on the answer selected.
- Step 2. Select an overall maturity level rating for that capability domain that best represents where most of the results align.
- Step 3. Repeat these steps for each capability domain across tabs 2 to 7.
Once you have finished answering, select an overall maturity rating for your entity or regulatory function on tab 8.
You will need to use your best judgement to decide whether you have satisfied the requirements for a maturity level. If the ratings fall across multiple maturity levels, choose the rating where most of the results align. For example, if your results for capability domain 6.1 were 4 ratings of ‘embedded’ and one rating of ‘developing’, you would choose an overall rating of ‘embedded’ for that capability domain.
Example – completed self-assessment results
| Principle 6: Continuously improved and outcomes-focused | Response | Current Capability Level | Overall Capability Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
Capability 6.1: Capability to continuously improve systems, processes, and staff capability, including evaluating the effectiveness of regulatory activities in achieving regulatory outcomes and adjusting as required. | Answer selected | Embedded | |
| 63. Do you have continuous improvement processes in place for quality assurance and systematic review of your regulatory activities and processes, including for statements of reasons for decisions? | Answer selected | Embedded | |
| 64. Do you have processes in place to monitor and evaluate your capability needs? | Answer selected | Embedded | |
65. Do you have processes in place to identify capacity needs and opportunities for innovation? For example:
| Answer selected | Developing | |
| 66. Do you have processes in place for staff development to build regulatory capability based on identified needs, including evaluating capability building processes to ensure these are effective? For example, induction training, regular refresher training, auditing a sample of decisions. | Answer selected | Embedded | |
| 67. Do you evaluate your regulatory performance against your Statement of Expectations and Statement of Intent and include evaluation results in your annual performance statements/annual report? | Answer selected | Embedded |
Once you have completed your self-assessment, share your rating results with the Department of Finance: regulatorcapability@finance.gov.au.
Your self-assessment results should be cleared by an appropriate SES officer for your entity or regulatory function before you provide them to Finance.
Finance will treat any information shared by you with us as confidential and will not share identified information about a regulator with other regulators or departments.
Using the self-assessment results
After completing the self-assessment, regulators will have a baseline maturity snapshot. Next steps include:
- Analyse results and set priorities for each of the maturity domains.
- Develop a Maturity Action Plan with actions, resources, responsibilities and timelines.
- Schedule reviews of the Maturity Action Plan and plan the next self-assessment to track progress.
Develop a Maturity Action Plan
Based on your self-assessment, identify:
- The top 2-3 priorities for each capability domain and why they are priorities.
- Actions required and resources needed.
- Who will be responsible for each action.
- Target completion dates.
More information
Read more about performing a self-assessment, using the results, developing an action plan, frequently asked questions and other resources.
Contact
For further information and support, please contact: regulatorcapability@finance.gov.au
