Organisation: Department of Justice
Job Title: Senior Financial Analyst
Word Limit: No Limit
Location: Melbourne – CBD
KSC 1: Technical expertise – Sound understanding of public sector management, accrual budgeting, balance sheet management, output pricing and costing and the associated policies, practices and procedures. Please outline your understanding of contemporary public sector resource management frameworks.
As an Accountant with a Master of Professional Accounting, and a membership with the Certified Practicing Accountants, I have successfully worked within financial services for over 10 years, and since 2010, as a Senior Finance Officer in the Department of Human Services Victoria. Throughout my career, I have consistently proven my ability to provide exceptional accounting and complex financial support within a contemporary public sector resource management framework.
In my current role as Senior Finance Officer for the Department of Human Services, I am responsible for providing full accounting, analysis, and reporting services for the concessions to pensioners and beneficiaries output group budget of $700 million, which provides assistance to low income households to meet utility costs, such as electricity, gas, water, and property rates. This is a highly complex system involving up to 20 different programs, each containing multiple sub-programs for many power utility stakeholders, and over 70 local councils.
When I first inherited the concession program responsibility, I was faced with the enormous task of processing accrual budgeting, balance sheet management, and variable costings, in addition to in-depth analysis and reporting. I immediately recognised that a system for collecting, collating, and presenting the vast amount of financial information was urgently required, in order to conduct and present accurate comparison and variance analysis reports. Using my exceptional Microsoft Excel, and Australian accounting standards skills, combined with an intimate understanding of the Victorian Government standing direction financial management process, as determined by the Minister for Finance, and issued by the Department of Treasury and Finance (supplementary to the Financial Management Act 1994). I systematically created a number of integrated spreadsheets that took into account all exiting variables, and enabled me to efficiently manage the accounting and financial process.
I use these spreadsheets to generate information to run the monthly budget accrual processes for the group, provide analysis and commentary, undertake budget forecasts, and examine trends and risks associated with this. I also compile and provide monthly reports to the Director and Senior Managers, which involves a detailed analysis between actual and YTD budget and forecast for every activity and account.
As a result of my ability to effectively manage, collate, manipulate, and present a broad range of financial variables in an ever changing environment, where policies or programs are constantly being updated, and emerging issues directly affect pricing and cost variables — my financial model and tool has significantly enhanced the timeliness, and accuracy of month and year-end processing, forecasting, accruals management, and reporting.
My newly created financial model and spreadsheet tools have been so successful that the Tasmanian Government have adopted the new processes, and integrated it into their Concessions Program.
KSC 2: Technical expertise – experience in delivering effective budget development and financial management services and advice for a government entity or department.
This position will be required to assist with the management of the annual budget, accounting and financial planning processes for the Criminal Justice Division. Please detail the most complex budget process you have been involved in delivering.
In my current role as Senior Finance Officer in the Department of Human Services VIC, a position I have held for over 5 years, I have proven my ability to enhance financial accounting processes and procedures, work effectively with a team, and add value to the financial management team. As a result, the complexity of my responsibility has also increased, and I am now in a direct position of support for the Finance Manager. I work with the Finance Manager to oversee all aspects of the budget, and financial management processes for multiple branches, and provide information and analysis to support informed decisions. I manage a range of review analysis and commentary, comparison, reconciliation, forecasting, and reporting functions, as well the provision of advice relating to budget effectiveness and delivering improved outcomes. This includes balance sheet management, to provide financial snapshots and to ensure that work areas have adequate resources for current operations and for future growth.
My current responsibility profile includes
- Reconciling all concession programs, looking after $700 million budget management, and reporting
- Managing the $10 million budget for flood and bushfire victims
Having achieved exceptional results within these fields, I have been called upon several times to cover for the Finance Manager during short and long-term absences. Most recently, I provided long-term cover and was called upon to contribute to the budget and expenditure review committee (BERC) process. In the absence of the Financial Manager, I confidently stepped in and utilised my proven skills in budget development, financial management services, MS Excel, analysis, reporting, and Oracle software to create accurate budget estimations across all branch budgets. Working closely with a team of Policy Analysts, and the Policy Team, I skilfully undertook extensive comparison and variance analysis of current, historical, and future financial processes and issues to present highly detailed budgetary forecasts that are to be use by the Treasury Department. I also provided interdepartmental support, guidance, advice, and consultation on many complex financial and accounting processes, which govern the departments’ budget management framework. My expertise in developing collaborative relationships, and communicating effectively enabled our partnership to achieve excellent results.
This was a very complex process, which is strictly governed by Government legislation, policies, accounting frameworks, and procedures. The Government is constantly amending, altering and proposing changes to programs and policies, and it was my role to accommodate these potential or emergent issues with the budget preparation. Having already proven my accounting capability and intimate understanding of effective budget preparation, I was able to apply my procedural understanding, combined with my accounting/analysis expertise to develop a very detailed and accurate budget projection. Key to my success was the use of the financial model and spreadsheet analysis tools that I had previously developed to manage the $700 million concessions to pensioners and beneficiaries output group budget.
My ability to cover for the Financial Manager at the most critical time of budget preparation and forecasting for the Treasury, is proof of my capability to effectively combine Australian, Victorian and international accounting procedural knowledge, with an intimate understanding of the management of annual budget, accounting, and financial planning processes for a public sector organisation.
