To be, and to be recognised as, the world’s best converged communications regulator
December 2014
Canberra
Red Building
Benjamin Offices
Chan Street
Belconnen ACT
PO Box 78
Belconnen ACT 2616
T +61 2 6219 5555
F +61 2 6219 5353 / Melbourne
Level 32
Melbourne Central Tower
360 Elizabeth Street Melbourne VIC
PO Box 13112
Law Courts
Melbourne VIC 8010
T +61 3 9963 6800
F +61 3 9963 6899 / Sydney
Level 5
The Bay Centre
65 Pirrama Road
Pyrmont NSW
PO Box Q500
Queen Victoria Building
NSW 1230
T +61 2 9334 7700
1800 226 667
F +61 2 9334 7799
© Commonwealth of Australia 2014
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the Commonwealth. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the Manager, Editorial Services, Australian Communications and Media Authority, PO Box 13112 Law Courts, Melbourne Vic 8010.
Published by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
acma | li
Chairman’s foreword 1
From the Chairman 2
Introduction 4
Convergence and change 6
The ACMA strategic response 7
Meeting our standard 8
The narrative framework 11
The case study narrative 14
Bridging to the future 15
Thought leadership 15
Regulatory development 22
Transforming the ACMA 36
Structural fit with convergence 36
Agency innovation 39
Major program delivery 44
Resource and program management 44
Corporate governance 53
Effective regulation 60
Regulatory administration and operations 60
Regulation for the citizen 60
Regulation for the industry 65
Stakeholder engagement 69
Attachments 75
Attachment 1—ACMA work program portfolio of activities 76
acma | vChairman’s foreword
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) is Australia’s independent statutory authority, a ‘converged’ regulator created to regulate many of the elements of media and communications, and tasked to bring together the convergence threads of the four ‘worlds’ of telecommunications, broadcasting, radiocommunications and the internet.
From the Chairman
Since its creation from a merger of two predecessor agencies in 2005, the ACMA has been confronted by a very challenging environment, and the pressures for change on the agency are unremitting.
The ACMA has set itself the goal of meeting a self-imposed standard: ‘To be, and be recognised as, the world's best converged communications regulator.’ This standard is aligned with the agency’s strategic purpose of making media and communications work in Australia’s public interest, in ways relevant to the various scenarios of convergence and the networked society as they emerge.
The standard has been a profiled part of ACMA internal transformation and business planning activities for a number of years. It has been articulated externally in the annual ACMA rolling three-year corporate plan, since the 2009–2012 plan was published in 2008.
Faced with the difficulties of measuring converged communication regulation performance in an internationally comparable and globally valid way, the ACMA has chosen a narrative-based approach of telling its own story in the context of convergence. This approach is tuned to the ACMA’s specific environment and presents case studies in areas where its practices are world-leading, using criteria that are relevant to the organisation, its mandate and its purpose.
The narrative seeks to establish a common ground for valid international comparison, by bringing the fundamental tasks for any converged regulator into an overarching framework.
Since the standard is seen as one for the whole organisation, not just individual parts or work programs, the overall narrative integrates a total portfolio of activities. From this portfolio certain exemplars are selected, using a rigorous internal process complemented by external peer review, as case studies to show collectively where the ACMA considers that it is actually achieving world-leading performance.
The narrative structure has four parts, each divided into two sub-streams. The first part is Bridging to the future, which means active engagement with the currents of change and proactive development of responses through thought leadership and regulatory development. The second part involves Transforming the agency, adapting the organisation to the changing world of convergence by ensuring a structural fit with convergence and a focus on agency innovation. The third is Major program delivery by the agency through resource and program management, with fully effective corporate governance. Finally, Effective regulation—doing the ‘day job’ of the regulatory agency—is essential, with effective and efficient regulatory administration and operations, coupled with extensive stakeholder engagement.
This narrative framework captures the central aspects required for a converged regulator to deliver outcomes in the public interest. It does so drawing on the specific performance by the ACMA in terms of its:
1. Vision to remain forever relevant.
2. Strategic purpose—‘To make communications and media work in Australia’s public interest’.
3. Standard—‘To be, and to be recognised as, the world’s best converged regulator’, as addressed in this document.
In September 2011, the ACMA published the first preliminary assessment of its performance against its standard on a beta website, engage.acma.gov.au. The overall narrative integrated a total of 83 activities, from which 27 were selected as case studies to show where the ACMA considered that it is meeting its standard.
Then in March 2013, the ACMA published a more definitive assessment, based on a total of 94 areas of activity. Of these activities, 37 were included as case studies.
This iteration of the narrative continues the process of maturation in assessing the standing of the agency with regard to its standard. The concept of activities which ‘sustain our standard’ has been introduced to recognise performance that contributes to world-leading performance, or delivers effectively on mandated outcomes or statutory obligations. It identifies a total of 113 areas of activity.
Of these activities, 64 enable the ACMA to meet its standard, 43 are included as case studies of world-leading practice and 21 are presented because they sustain the ACMA in world-leading performance, in the sense of supporting that performance through effective delivery of ACMA outcomes or obligations.
The ACMA believes that the assessment in this third iteration of the narrative, across the whole organisation and the associated case studies, demonstrates a critical mass of activities where the ACMA is world-leading. As a consequence, I feel the ACMA has gone a considerable way to meeting the standard that it is striving for. In my view, the ACMA has the strategic vision, demonstrated capability and, importantly, the energy to further improve and continue delivering into the future against the standard of performance that it expects of itself.
As in previous releases, feedback on studies had been sought from relevant external peers and, since it sees itself as a learning organisation, the ACMA sought further feedback and review via the comment mechanisms of the site hosting the narrative.
As a further manifestation of the ACMA seeking to be a learning organisation, I genuinely invite any interested party to review this, the third iteration of The ACMA—meeting our standard narrative, and join the conversation about our performance. That conversation is a vital aspect of testing and confirming our assessment.
Chris Chapman
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
December 2014
Introduction
The ACMA is the independent statutory authority tasked with ensuring most elements of Australia’s media and communications legislation, related regulations, and numerous derived standards and codes of practice, operate effectively and efficiently, and in the public interest.
The ACMA is a ‘converged’ communications and media regulator, created to bring together the threads of the evolving communications universe, specifically in the Australian context the convergence of the four ‘worlds’ of telecommunications, broadcasting, radiocommunications and the internet.[1] The ACMA was formed on 1July 2005 by a merger of the responsibilities of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) and the Australian Communications Authority (ACA). It was created, at least in part, to respond to the observed and anticipated changes brought about by this convergence and is one of a handful of truly converged communications regulators in the world.
Positioned across the components of the converged landscape, the agency has the strategic purpose of making media and communications work in Australia’s public interest, as the various scenarios of convergence emerge. It has set a self-imposed standard, expressed as: ‘To be, and be recognised as, the world's best converged communications regulator.’ This document describes the ACMA’s current evaluation of its progress in meeting that standard.
Congruent with its converged nature, the ACMA bridges a diverse collection of legislated objectives. The agency has responsibilities under four principal acts—the Radiocommunications Act 1992, the Telecommunications Act 1997, the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999 and the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. There are another 22 Acts to which the agency responds in areas such as spam, the Do Not Call Register, and interactive gambling.
The ACMA also creates and administers more than 400 legislative instruments, including radiocommunications, spam and telecommunications regulations, and licence area plans for free-to-air broadcasters. An important aspect of the agency’s work is also to collect taxes and levies on behalf of the Australian Government, making it the fourth largest collector of taxes and levies in the Australian Commonwealth behind the Australian Taxation Office, the Australian Customs Service and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
In broad terms, the ACMA has three major heads of functional responsibility. These are to:
1. Discharge, in an independent and impartial fashion, its regulatory functions under legislation or pursuant to ministerial direction as given from time-to-time, and consistent with its Portfolio Budget Statement (PBS) mandate.
2. Deliver specific programs and activities on behalf of the government of the day in an accountable fashion to agreed outcomes and benchmarks; for example, setting up and supervising the Do Not Call Register, delivering cybersafety where the government (represented by its portfolio department, the Department of Communications) is the agency’s ‘client’.
3. Render objective and independent advice to the government, as requested by the Minister for Communications, in matters related to areas of ACMA responsibility and expertise; for example, in spectrum management.
As part of a broader government initiative to reduce the regulatory burden for business and the community, the ACMA is modernising its regulatory framework, by systematically and diligently removing outmoded and burdensome elements.[2] The aim, based on first principles thinking, has been to assess the fit of regulatory tools to the convergent network-driven economy, simplifying remaining standards, regulatory policies and instruments, and aligning them with enduring public policy outcomes. The ACMA is therefore currently engaged in a vigorous program of regulatory reform, including the removal of redundant instruments and a large number of reporting requirements, with a move to review and auditing. Regulatory costs to industry will be significantly reduced in the coming years.
In terms of geography, the ACMA operates on a continent that has some unique characteristics that have influenced (and continue to influence) media and communications marketplace dynamics. Australia has a high concentration of its population living in urban areas—about 65 per cent of the population lives in an area that is just 0.5 per cent of the continent—while, at the other extreme, 10 per cent of the population is spread across 93 per cent of the landmass. This makes Australia, together with Canada, a country with the most uneven population distribution in the world, with the OECD index of geographic concentration for 2005 showing Canada at 80.99 and Australia very close behind at 80.03.[3]
Convergence and change
Convergence is a term with many meanings. In the ACMA, convergence has been used primarily to reference the merging of the previously distinct services by which information is communicated—telephone, television (free-to-air and subscription), radio and newspapers—over digital platforms. The ACMA also works with industry and citizens to solve new concerns and mitigate risks arising in the evolving networked society and information economy, recognising that Australians are interacting with digital communications and content in changing ways.
The ACMA has confronted a very challenging environment since its inception. Created squarely in the context of fundamental change, the pressures for change on the agency are constant and unremitting.
In a May 2011 speech entitled The ‘convergence phenomena’ from a regulator’s perspective, the Chairman of the ACMA, Chris Chapman, explained that the agency deals with the reality of convergence every day. He made a layered series of observations about the reality of convergence, the pressures for change that are bearing down and the need to identify the underlying solutions to ‘broken concepts’.[4]
Many of the controls (the traditional regulatory ‘access points’) on the production and distribution of content and the provision of telecommunications services through licensing or other subsidiary legislative arrangements, or by standards and codes (whether co-regulatory or self-regulatory), are subject to revision and adaptation to the digital economy. This should not be interpreted as a criticism of the legislation. It is the very nature of convergence that it often leads to unexpected developments, sometimes very rapidly.
Moreover, there are new platforms, applications, business models, value chains and forms of social interaction available with more to come in what is a dynamic, innovative environment.
Challenges for regulators include cross-jurisdictional issues and the need for engagement and collaboration with stakeholders locally, regionally and internationally. Therefore, not only does the ACMA inherently address a wide and disparate range of responsibilities, it does so against a backdrop of rapid and disruptive change.
The ACMA strategic response
In response to this environment of sustained and fundamental change, the ACMA has the vision and need to remain constantly relevant. Its strategic intent is to achieve this by delivering on its outcomes mandated by government, discharging its statutory obligations and transforming itself into a resilient, externally facing, learning organisation, responsive to the numerous pressures for change that confront it.
The ACMA has developed a strategic narrative to frame its view of the future of regulation in communications and media, and published three ‘tent-pole’ thought leadership pieces communicating that framework: