Government finance departments say extensive and superfluous reporting frameworks have pushed them to look for new ways to reduce their “disclosure burden”.

An audit of the federal bureaucracy’s financial disclosure has found that current processes are resource-intensive, and can be entirely unwarranted.

Additionally, smaller agencies are feeling the burden much more than larger ones, the report commissioned by the board of APS secretaries found.

“The message received during consultations was that current disclosure loads were extensive and out of proportion to meeting accountability obligations to the parliament,” the audit said.

“This situation applied to all entities, and was further accentuated for smaller entities by the need to meet the same obligations as larger entities under the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.”

The report made 134 recommendations, calling for cultural change, an overhaulvof vetting processes and support for electronic tabling o documents in parliament.

All recommendations have been accepted.

Public servants told the analysts they were concerned that particular reporting standards would not be applicable in the public sector.

“The level of disclosures required to be presented in the department's financial statements are burdensome,” the report said.

“The most resource intensive impact of internal government regulation is reporting and the financial audit process.”

Department of Finance secretary Jane Halton said the report would be a big help in future assessments of processes and attempts to reduce red tape.

“Over the coming months we will start to see regulation that is better targeted, more effective, and ultimately uses less of our scarce resources,” she said.

“This will allow us to be better focussed on delivering services for the community. The review will help us to test future regulation against a set of principles, to avoid the future occurrence of red tape.”

The report also called for departments to look at freedom of information processes as a good place to reduce regulation while becoming more transparent.

“The FOI Act should be amended to no longer require entities to report quarterly and annually, and instead only provide relevant information annually to a single point in government,” the report said.

“The administrative burden of scanning and making such documents available online is low, with potential savings in having to individually provide such material to an applicant.

“Enhancing the use of disclosure logs is important for transparency and accountability of government, and to move towards a pro-disclosure culture across government.”