Practice Advice on Public Financial Management
Modernizing Accountability and Control (OECD)
Description: In 2005 the OECD published a Policy Brief entitled Public Sector Modernisation: Modernising Accountability and Control. The Policy Brief "looks at the changes and challenges facing control systems in OECD countries."
Commentary: The paper reviews the internal and external control regimes in OECD countries and provides general encouragement to move toward permormance-oriented approaches. It concludes with:
"OECD countries are increasingly focussing on the performance of the public sector. This has led to varied organisational structures, new reporting regimes and data, new service delivery arrangements and new management techniques. This complexity of government intervention requires new control regimes, from internal audits to external auditors and increasing use of value for money and performance audits. Performance-oriented budgeting and management requires government to specify clearly the objectives and outcomes of a project before allocating resources to it and to develop performance measures that will enable the success or otherwise of a project to be assessed."
To help provide support for member countries an OECD Working Party of Senior Budget Officials has created an Experts Group on Accountability and Control (SBO-A&C) and related topics. The meetings of the experts group are organised jointly with the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Source: OECD Public Sector Modernisation: Modernising Accountability and Control. http://www.oecd.org/governance/publicemploymentandmanagement/34904246.pdf 13 Accessed, 1 November, 2012).
Page Created By: Ian Clark, last updated 10 December, 2012. The content presented on this page is drawn directly from the source(s) named above, and consists of direct quotations or close paraphrases of material drawn from it. This material does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the creator of this page or the researchers associated with this project. Further, the opinions expressed in the source and presented on this page do not necessarily reflect the official institutional positions of the organization responsible for the source’s publication.