Probity / Audit / Public accountability
GOVERNMENT &PUBLIC SECTOR.
Public money carries a standard of proof that private money does not. Backed runs contestable rounds with the probity controls built in rather than bolted on, and keeps the record in the shape an auditor, a minister or an FOI officer will ask for it.
The status quo
HOW THIS RUNSTODAY
None of this is anyone’s fault. Each of these is a sensible response to a real constraint, and together they produce a record that cannot answer the question it will eventually be asked.
01
Version control by convention
Rounds run on shared spreadsheets and email threads, where version control is a convention rather than a control.
02
Declared, but not enforced
Conflict declarations are collected on PDF forms. Nothing in the system stops a conflicted assessor opening the application anyway.
03
Scores out of sight
Scoring happens in Excel. The panel convenor cannot see progress, and the recommendation is hard to reconcile against the published criteria.
04
A day to find the record
A request for the decision record means someone spends a day assembling it from four folders and two mailboxes.
05
Letters without a log
Decision letters are drafted individually. There is no dispatch log, so “we told them on the 14th” is a memory, not a fact.
06
Obligations without an owner
Post-award obligations live in a separate tracker that no one owns after the programme manager moves on.
With Backed
WHAT CHANGESAND WHY
The same six pressure points, answered by the system rather than by somebody remembering. Each of these is a control, not a convention.
01
One configured process
Every round runs the same configured process, so the probity standard does not depend on which officer set it up.
02
Conflicts that remove access
Conflicts are declared in-system against the round. A declared conflict removes access to the application outright.
03
Scores captured as they happen
Scoring, panel deliberation and the final recommendation are captured against the published criteria as the work happens.
04
The record is already built
The audit trail is a first-class object: every configuration change and on-behalf action attributed, timestamped and exportable.
05
Every letter logged
Letters are generated from templates and dispatched in bulk, with the send logged against the application.
06
Obligations beside the award
Conditions, milestones and acquittal run in the same system as the award, so the post-award record sits beside the pre-award one.
How it works
ONE AUDITABLEWORKFLOW
From round configuration through to the final accountability report.
Configure the round
Set the form, the eligibility rules, the assessment framework, the conflict rules and the panel structure. Each programme keeps its own configuration inside one account: shared infrastructure, separate process, separate delegation limits.
Publish to applicants
Community organisations, businesses and other agencies apply through a branded portal under your own domain. Guided eligibility screening filters ineligible applicants before they write anything, which cuts the volume your team has to read.
Take the declarations
Panel members complete a structured conflict declaration before they are assigned anything. The rules you configure are enforced by the system, and the declaration set is a permanent, exportable record.
Score against the criteria
Assessors score through their own portal and see only their assignments. Convenors see the aggregate and the spread. Every score, comment and reassignment is timestamped.
Decide, and record why
Moderation, delegate approval against a financial limit, and the reasoning recorded against the application. Offer and regret letters go out from controlled templates with the dispatch logged.
Report upward and outward
Live views of fund status, decisions pending and round outcomes, drawn from the record rather than compiled from it. Approved grants can be published to a public register.
Close the loop
Conditions and milestone schedules are set at award. Acquittal reports are collected through the recipient portal, and milestone approval is what releases the next payment.
Capabilities
What you get
- Contestable round management, configured per programme
- Structured conflict declarations with automatic removal of access
- Weighted scoring rubrics, with weightings set per round
- Blind review · applicant and organisation identity suppressed during scoring
- A complete, timestamped audit log, exportable for FOI and internal audit
- Delegation limits enforced at the point of approval, not reconciled afterwards
- Automated decision letters with merge fields and a dispatch log
- Public register export for approved grants, including the fields GrantConnect expects
- Post-award milestone, acquittal and condition tracking
- Accounting-system sync so payment data is not re-keyed
- Multi-programme administration from a single account
- Role-based access: programme staff see only their own rounds
- A branded applicant portal that reflects the agency, not the vendor
- Records held in Australia (AWS Sydney), aws-ap-southeast-2; some processing and mail delivery happen outside Australia
- WCAG 2.1 AA practices across every applicant-facing page
Common questions
Before you ask
Does the audit trail hold up to a Freedom of Information request?
The audit log records every configuration change, every assessment action, every decision and every on-behalf action, each attributed to a named user and timestamped. It is append-only and exportable as a dataset rather than a screenshot, so the response to a request is an extract rather than a reconstruction.
How does conflict of interest management actually work?
Declarations are made per assessment round, before assignment. The rules you configure decide what a declared interest does, and the strong setting is the default: the conflicted assessor loses access to the application entirely rather than seeing it with a warning attached. The declaration set for a round is exportable as a single record.
Can we run several programmes independently in one account?
Yes. Funding categories carry their own forms, branding, approval limits, assessor pools and reporting. Data access rules keep staff to the programmes they work on, and reporting can hold programmes apart or roll them together.
Where is the data hosted?
Records are held in Australia (AWS Sydney) (aws-ap-southeast-2). Some processing and mail delivery happen outside Australia: the trust page names every store with its provider and region, and the subprocessor list is published.
What can you give our security assessors?
Architecture and data-flow documentation, the subprocessor list, the access-control model, the retention and deletion policy, and the penetration-testing position. We would rather send your assessors the documents than claim a badge. Ask us for the pack.
Does it suit local government as well as Commonwealth and state?
Yes, and the smaller the team the more the configuration matters. A council running four community grant rounds a year gets the same probity controls as a department running forty, without the same setup effort.