Registration of foreign arrangements to be streamlined

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is changing the way local governments notify it of sister city or other foreign arrangements.

The Foreign Arrangements Scheme under which state, territory
and local governments are required to notify the Commonwealth of any existing
or future arrangements that they enter with overseas cities, states, provinces,
or governments began on 10 December 2020.

In response to feedback from users of the online
notification portal, DFAT is developing a new registration process it says will
give Australian entities “greater internal control of registrations and enable
them to manage their notifications … and share their arrangements”.

Each organisation will register a range of Portal ‘users’
who can submit foreign arrangements on their behalf.

Under the new registration process, each organisation will have three levels of Portal Users: Master Administrator, Administrator, and Standard User.

All three levels of users, once registered on the Portal,
will be able to submit notifications regarding foreign arrangements for their organisation.

Initially, DFAT will create accounts for all three levels of users for an entity. Once the information is received by DFAT, the users identified by each organisation will be sent an email asking them to verify their registration and select a password.

Until the new registration process is launched, entities
will still able to notify DFAT of arrangements via the current registration
system.

Questions regarding the new process can be sent to DFAT’s Foreign Arrangements Taskforce atforeignarrangements@dfat.gov.au