V.ISC.2401 - Integrity System: Roles and Responsibilities

Summary

The Integrity Systems Company (ISC) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and was initiated in 2017 as a result of the 2015 SAFEMEAT Initiatives Review. The SAFEMEAT Initiatives Review took a whole-of-chain approach to assessment of the red meat industry’s integrity system.

A review of ISC was conducted to deliver against one of the recommendations in the SAFEMEAT Initiatives review, which stated that a review should be conducted on ISC after 3–5 years of operations being initiated. The review was to determine if ISC is delivering against the originally stated remit.

This review found that ISC was delivering against its remit but there was confusion amongst stakeholders in terms of understanding policy leadership within the integrity systems. This project completed a review of the integrity system governance framework to clearly define and document the roles and responsibilities of parties involved in integrity system policy development and leadership, and the processes for consultation, decision making and implementation.

Objectives

1. Review the current approach for integrity system policy development, leadership and consultation through SAFEMEAT and its associated Committees (e.g. Jurisdictional Traceability Group and Advisory Group) and MLA’s Supply Chain Taskforce.
2. Document a current state view of the key roles and responsibilities for the integrity system across policy development, leadership, strategy, administration, program implementation, funding and evaluation etc., including:
a. identifying any gaps or potential duplication across these roles and responsibilities
b. identifying areas for potential change or streamlining in line with best practice governance.
3. Document a current state view of the core processes that underpin the consultation and decision-making framework for the integrity system, including:
a. identifying any gaps or potential duplication in the consultation and decision-making frameworks
b. identifying areas for potential change or streamlining in line with best practice governance.
4. Consult with key stakeholders on the current state view and areas identified for change and consolidate feedback into a draft ‘Statement of leadership and core processes document’ for consideration.
5. Deliver a presentation on the findings and recommendations on completion of the project.

Key findings

• Integrity System policy is overlapping by design. It is based on committee arrangements that are constituted under different Red Meat Memorandum of Understanding (Red Meat MOU) authorities, SAFEMEAT and MLA, and is analogous to a dual board structure.
• The scope of policy development is broad and includes standards, regulations, programs, and interoperability across the Integrity System.
• Each committee has a documented scope, roles and responsibilities, and arrangements that allow the committees to operate and adapt if needed. The terms of reference are clear that decision-making is based on consensus, best available evidence, and consultation.
• The committees are used to seek advice on stakeholders' own policies and/or systems-level policy decisions.
• Stakeholders value the Integrity System as a forum for collaboration, engagement, and information exchange on policy issues. They describe the value of agility as being a flexible and fluid system of interconnected systems and committees made up of all the important Integrity System stakeholders for policy development and resolution.
• Stakeholders are often engaged in multiple (simultaneous) policy processes.
• The principle of consensus extends to policy advice and decisions across the Integrity System. This can create dysfunctional committee meetings.
• Feedback received from stakeholders consulted for this report is that the Integrity System’s policy leadership functions and core processes by in large work but are constrained. The system is collaborative and agile but, can be unresponsive to some policies that are important and require agreement but may not be urgent.

• To improve, the Integrity System has two options:
a. introduce a combination of good governance practices to standing committee processes
b. consistently apply existing stand up/down provisions to make best use of taskforces, working groups and specialist sub-committees.

Benefits to industry

Stakeholder clarity is important to the red meat Integrity System’s performance because industry and government stakeholders have different policy leadership roles and responsibilities (individually and collectively) across the system, and there is scope for slippage and confusion if these roles/responsibilities are not well understood. This project reviewed and documented the policy leadership roles and core processes for the Integrity System to create less confusion with industry.

MLA action

A paper and presentation has been provided to SAFEMEAT on the key findings and recommendation from this review.

Future research

No further research is required. The findings and recommendations will be analysed by SAFEMEAT and will determine if any changes are required to be made in the roles and responsibilities of organisations involved in the integrity systems policy space.