Through the reform of public resource management, "we should be able to change mindsets, to plan and act as managers for what concerns the work of our service, individually and collectively, for the benefit of the Cypriot citizen," said Rea Georgiadou, Auditor General of the Republic.
She was speaking during a workshop held recently entitled "Public Resource Management Reform in the Republic of Cyprus - Developing a plan by Ministry and preparing for its implementation", in the context of the Public Resource Reform of the State.
In her address, Rea Georgiou referred to the work of the Reform, to which the General Accounting Office is committed. Financial management in the public sector, said Ms Georgiou, is the effort to manage limited resources in order to ensure that the required results are achieved economically and efficiently and in a manner that serves the needs of citizens. She went on to say that Public Financial Management will always provide unlimited food for thought on the central problem of resource scarcity and the intertwined concepts of development and allocation.
Further, Ms. Georgiou clarified that financial management reform for a state is not and cannot be an isolated initiative. Rather, it arises, she said, as part of a set of broader reforms and behaviours that enhance public accountability for the results achieved through the management of public resources. This transition journey, he continued, creates requirements for organizational change, strategic planning introduction of new roles and norms and most importantly a culture change towards transparency and accountability.
Next, Mr. Filippos Katranis, Change Management and Education Project Manager, presented the implementation path and next steps in the journey of all the projects that make up the Financial Reform. He gave a brief review of the 3 pillars on which the reform is based saying that in essence with the adoption of the accrual basis which is the first pillar, rules and order are being put in place in the way the financial data of the state is presented, which highlights and will highlight issues that were not managed in the past such as assets, debtors, contingent liabilities, etc.
With the transparency given to public finances, he continued, the information will now be visible to the citizen and of course to the parliament which will make it possible to easily distinguish a department that created a new revenue stream by utilizing its assets from a department that, created a loss for the government.
The system, he continued, is necessary as the second pillar to enable us to manage the information that is generated and is a tool to reduce the waste of time on matters that do not add value by giving new possibilities through automation.
These should be monitored by all of us, and especially you, he stressed to those present, as the decision makers you have to manage them in the best possible way.
Continuing and addressing the Directors General and the Directors of the departments/services, he said that the teams of the General Accounting Office at the Ministry level have been set up as the third pillar to be by their side in order to support them more effectively in this journey and to have all the tools to be able to achieve the best possible results for each of them and thus for the Cypriot Citizen as a whole. He further assured of the willingness and readiness of the General Accounting Office of the Republic to support the organisations in this journey.
The workshop concluded with the preparation of a preliminary Action Plan for each Ministry individually for the implementation of the reform and the effective use of the Electronic Operational Resource Management System.
Source: KYPE
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