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Appendix 4: Portfolio monitoring and reviews
'Portfolio monitoring' is a broad term that covers a range of activities undertaken by the GRDC to ensure that individual projects achieve their objectives and scheduled milestones, and that the R&D portfolio as a whole continues to address industry and government stakeholder priorities. The portfolio in 2005-06 included around one thousand projects, at various stages of development, spread across four output groups.
The portfolio monitoring system includes internal guidelines and/or procedures for:
- identifying and managing risks associated with individual projects during planning and implementation stages
- evaluating progress reports for project performance against objectives
- developing business cases, terms of reference and time frames for a limited number of formal reviews of targeted investment areas from across the entire portfolio.
At the project level, portfolio monitoring involves an annual assessment of each project, by way of an annual progress report that identifies progress against the aims and milestones of the project. Satisfactory progress reports must be submitted to the corporation before further payments are made to research providers.
Other GRDC portfolio monitoring activities in 2005-06 included:
- external visits to research providers' facilities, including research laboratories and sites where field trials are carried out
- internal monitoring procedures to assess the performance and efficiency of administrative activities associated with managing the large investment portfolio. This includes tracking the status of progress reports against internal performance targets and producing summary reports for management and staff. This contributed to a significant reduction in the number of progress reports remaining outstanding (unprocessed) at 30 June 2006.