Projects

Review of the Accredited Service Provider Scheme

Client.
Office of Energy and Climate Change
Services
Review, Design, Policy

A comprehensive public regulatory review to improve third party access to statewide electricity networks.

01.
Client issue

Our client, the Office of Energy and Climate Change, operates the Accredited Provider Scheme, which regulates third party access to enable safe and skilled connection to the network. The Scheme is closely connected to the work of Distribution Network Service Providers (DNSPs). The Scheme had not been reviewed for over 10 years and there were widespread industry calls for change, from DNSPs, providers and peaks. Our client wanted a thorough review to bring the Scheme to contemporary standards.

Our clients also had an immediate issue, in that the processes for delivering the Scheme had become out of step with good practice, resulting in unacceptable backlogs, staff pressure and significant consumer dissatisfaction.

02.
Our approach

Our team worked simultaneously on two parallel pieces.

The first was a short-term workflow review and redesign, mapping ‘as is’ processes, customer journeys and reviewing key documents; identifying near-term options and developing near term ‘to be’ processes; and designing an end state including principles, scoped system options and a high-level roadmap.

The second was a comprehensive public regulatory review, comprising extensive consultation and design engagement with DNSPs, providers, peaks and consumer representatives and resulting in an issues paper, a position paper, an options summary and a final report including a potential implementation roadmap to Treasury. The public outputs of the review are at ASP Scheme review | NSW Climate and Energy Action.

03.
Result

Our client was able to introduce immediate changes to workflows and to educational collateral to streamline the processes and reduce backlog, and had a plan for longer-term updating. These changes eased demands on staff and demonstrated good faith with consumers interacting with the scheme at minimal cost.

The public regulatory review resulted in new resourcing for a staged overhaul of the approach, and received widespread support among industry members. The changes have been accepted and are currently being implemented.

04.
Key learnings

  • Taking a customer journey perspective for regulated entities can deliver significant insight into the economic demands of activities for participants, and shape the process and metrics.
  • Even when substantial reform is dependent on system change, there can be significant scope for improvements in the near term.
  • Industry stakeholders can sometimes appear to have disparate perspectives; an agreed problem statement makes it possible to collectively identify approaches that improve outcomes for all.
  • Programs need to be reviewed and updated regularly to guard against drift from contemporary expectations.

“The Insight Partnership really understood our issues and the way we work. The team managed consultation with our industry and gave us a compelling argument for making changes with a clear plan. These have been accepted by government and we are now implementing the recommendations.”

Manager
NSW Energy