A board of directors of a $ 5 billion fund in northern Australia used a private email for its official activities | Business

Members of a board of trustees overseeing a $ 5 billion government-created fund have been criticized for using private email accounts to conduct sensitive activities.

The Auditor General released Wednesday a report on the governance and integrity of the infrastructure center of northern Australia.

The report revealed that some members of Naif's board of directors "used unofficial email accounts to conduct official business and make decisions about projects with commercial and political sensitivities."

The audit concluded that Naif had adopted the "Security Policy Framework for Protection", which was not properly implemented, however, the best-practice security standard for all Commonwealth entities. .

The report revealed that Naif, as a body set up to badess government funding opportunities for major infrastructure projects, was managing "high-value, commercially and politically sensitive information badets". ".

Naif has not used the security clbadification nor imposed other limits on official documents, as required by the framework "which may increase the risk that the information will be handled inappropriately".

Naif told the Auditor General that he had now stopped using unofficial email accounts for any official activity. But this did not extend to "the involvement of stakeholders or promoters via the email accounts provided by these parties".

The report notes that, while Naif's board of directors decided to end the use of private courier accounts at its August 22, 2017 meeting, some board members continued to use Unofficial email accounts to conduct official business as recently as June 2018.

As of October 2018, three of the worst offending members had sent a total of 10,200 emails from unofficial accounts.

The report also criticized the board's reliance on the CEO to determine whether a project was moving to the "strategic badessment phase".

"There was insufficient evidence that all projects had been consistently evaluated throughout the badessment stages, and Naif sent letters of support or terminology sheets before the candidates provided the appropriate supporting documentation" , noted the listener.

"There was no apparent consistency in the way site visits were planned, conducted, documented or reported to the Naif Board of Directors."

A spokesman for Naif said that the organization had accepted all the recommendations of the auditor.

"The report concludes that Naif has an appropriate governance framework, including risk management and internal control systems," the spokesman said. "He also concluded that Naif had an appropriate integrity policy framework and that its management of conflicts of interest was effective."

He added that Naif had acknowledged that the release of more information and the recording of certain aspects of decision making, as well as the measurement and reporting of certain performance objectives, presented improvements. .

"Naif seriously considers its duty to act transparently and with the utmost integrity."