Multi-Year Strategy - Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is a Multi-Year Strategy?
The MYS presents a consolidated 10-year view of planned asset and asset-related proposals for each department. It identifies the different stages of proposal development in the different time slots of the MYS. Details of each proposal will change over time as an initiative evolves and develops.


Q. What is the aim of preparing the MYS?
The MYS identifies the proposals intended to deliver Government strategic priorities over the next 10 years.

The aim of the MYS includes:

• informing resource allocation and priority setting;
• presenting a full view of short, medium and longer-term planned proposals intended to be put to ERC at some stage;
• showing alignment of proposals to Government objectives and departmental corporate plans;
• providing a decision support tool as an aide to assess and balance asset (and asset-related) priorities across government;
• giving a longer-term perspective of departmental asset investment strategy and delivery, and;
• facilitating selection and timing for Gateway reviews.

Q. What is required in preparing your department MYS submission?
DTF encourages departments to discuss issues well in advance of delivery dates given for your submission. The MYS remains an evolving requirement so to ensure smooth and informed implementation you should work with your DTF relationship manager to develop and further integrate the MYS into existing asset planning arrangements.


Q. How is the data collected?
The data will be collected by Excel spreadsheet. Your proposals are to be entered consistent with their development stage and relevant time period and with Business Case Guidance requirements.

As part of your review and update of the 2006-07 MYS, a separate detailed manual on MYS data fields will be provided with the MYS spreadsheet. The MYS is to be refined and resubmitted to DTF. The spreadsheet contains the 2005-06 MYS data realigned to the new fields. (refer to Budget Information Request No. 17 – 2006-07 Strategy and Multi-Year Strategy).


Q. What is the Relationship of MYS to other Government processes?



The Asset Management Framework provides Government with greater strategic control over the asset bases, and provides and improved management platform to support the Government meeting its service delivery goals objectively and effectively.

A key feature of the framework is a requirement for departments to prepare enhanced asset strategies, leveraging the multi-year strategy already provided under the Gateway Initiative, and a new service strategy prior to each annual budget process, to deliver the best asset mix for the State.

These strategies will support improved decision making and will explicitly identify the links to Growing Victoria Together outcomes, service delivery, demand drivers, service standards and whole-of-life asset plans.

The MYS should tightly align with the Asset Strategy, which is aligned to the Service Strategy.


Q. What are the benefits?
For Government
The MYS informs ERC on asset and asset-related decision-making and resource allocation.

The MYS offers the tool that:

• identifies all asset (and asset-related) proposals being progressed by departments;
• advises on the development status of all proposals;
• summarises their proposed contribution to Government policies and priorities;
• presents Government with the opportunity to influence the outcome of asset proposals.

For Departments
The MYS presents your Department’s intended asset proposals over a 10-year planning pipeline. It provides as complete a view as is practicable of proposed initiatives being developed on behalf of ERC.

The MYS articulates proposed initiatives that can ‘sustain’ and can ‘grow’ the physical asset base now and over the medium to longer-term.

The MYS should directly support discussion on what asset base changes are realistically achievable within given Government constraints. It should assist to transparently advise Government on the full asset management role intended to be performed by your Department.


Q. What are the penalties for not including proposals in the MYS?
ERC expects all proposals put forward by a Department’s coordinating Minister will be identified in the MYS prior to any ERC consideration.

If a proposal is submitted to ERC as part of the Budget process and has not been identified in your Department’s MYS, that proposal will not be considered by ERC until the next Budget round (i.e. deferred for 12 months).

The only exception is when a proposal is submitted to address exceptional circumstances requiring urgent consideration such as a government’s response to a force majeure (e.g. a critical response to a natural disaster), or responding to a direct, explicit instruction that carries the full and unequivocal support of ERC.


Q. What use is made of your MYS?
The MYS is to provide a reliable 10-year snapshot of all proposals.
Your department must review the MYS in light of your Asset Strategy, any Service Strategy and asset management requirements. Departments must balance these against an assessment of material events beyond the term of the MYS that could significantly impact on the 10-year period reported.

Such impacts may include:

• major renewals falling due;
• demographic shifts; and
• technological obsolescence.

Impacts such as these need to be reflected in the MYS of a department.


Q. What proposal content is required in the MYS?
Each proposal presented in the MYS:

• is driven by an agreed Asset Strategy or responds to a explicit and specific new government policy;
• is consistent with any Service Strategy and tightly aligns with Government policy, outcomes, priorities and requirements;
• is identified in the departmental Asset Management Plan. (The AMP is to be kept sufficiently up-to-date as a working document to be relied upon as the prime source for further detail by both central agency and departmental purposes).

The MYS presents each proposal in a particular time slot within a 10-year horizon. A proposal given in any timeslot should be consistent with its development stage and on the likely timing it may be required to be put to the ERC for consideration as a potential initiative.

Proposals in the MYS are in a planned ‘agreed queue’ for possible ERC consideration at some point in time within a rolling 10-year period.


Q. Why are the MYS Time Period Groupings important?
The MYS is structured into timeslots to better align the information presented to support the ERC process and to inform ERC decision-making.

As a proposal progresses from concept to business case finalisation, the information presented in the MYS will move through these time periods consistent with their planning status.



The time zones are as follows:

• Budget year
• 0>2 years
• 3>5 years
• 6>10 years

Q. What are the Project Development Stages?
As a guide to assist departments to select proposals to be on the MYS, the following are suggested (dollar quantum) thresholds for each different MYS timeslot:

MYS Timeslot	Proposal entry threshold	Threshold basis
2006-07 intended proposals	No $ threshold (detailed estimate)	For asset and asset-related investment proposals – total capital outlays excluding capitalised associated output costs. For non-asset solution proposals – Capitalised stream of all costs.
0 to 2 years	> $5 million (detailed estimate)	For asset and asset-related investment proposals – total capital outlays excluding capitalised associated output costs. For non-asset solution proposals – Capitalised stream of all costs.
3 to 5 years	> $20 million (concept or preliminary design estimate)	For all proposals – the sum of the total capital outlays and the capitalised stream of all associated output costs.
6 to 10 years	> $50 million (early preliminary estimate)	For all proposals – the sum of all forecast outlays

For further information about the Multi Year Strategy, please contact:


Julie Walsh
Assistant Director
Budget and Financial Management Division
Department of Treasury and Finance
Tel: (03) 9651 0365
Email: julie.walsh@dtf.vic.gov.au