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Accounting by and supervision of legal persons with statutory tasks, part 5. Impact Assessment 2009
Many important statutory tasks, such as the provision of education and the maintenance of public order, are carried out by institutions outside central government. These institutions, known as legal persons with statutory tasks (RWTs), are financed from the public purse. In this Impact Assessment we look back at our audit entitled Accounting by and supervision of legal persons with statutory tasks, part 5. The central question is whether our recommendations and the ministers' undertakings have been followed up.
Small steps have been taken since our audit to improve the
supervision and accountability of RWTs. The ministers'
accountability to parliament, however, is still very limited.
Our Impact Assessment shows that half the ministers still do not
use risk analysis to supervise the operational management of their
RWTs.
The other issues we investigated were already reasonably or
satisfactorily in order at the time of our original audit and have
improved further since. The ministries' are developing strategies
on supervision. The form and content of supervision have been
worked out into supervisory arrangements for nearly all RWTs and
clusters of RWTs. Nearly all ministries have also introduced a
review policy. Not all RWTs publish an annual report yet. We
further found that the RWTs' regularity statements were still a
matter of concern.
The Minister of Finance responded to the government-wide report
on behalf of his counterpart at the Ministry of the Interior, the
other ministers and himself. He thought the Court of Audit's
predominantly positive opinion supported the efforts the ministries
had taken to improve the supervision and accountability structure.
He said the government protected the public interest at system
level and specific laws and regulations determined the relationship
between the ministers and the RWTs and the way in which they
account to parliament.
The Minister of Finance wrote that the ministers generally
accounted for themselves to parliament through other channels than
the ministerial annual reports. He wishes to keep this situation in
place, chiefly because the regularity of RWTs is now sufficiently
assured. The wish to limit the supervisory and accountability
burdens, especially for RWTs, was also an argument to leave the
current method of accountability unchanged.
We recommend that the Minister of Finance as coordinating
minister amend the Central Government Budget Regulations so that
ministerial annual reports disclose how much public money RWTs
receive and how the RWTs operate and perform. We also recommend
that the minister include a note in the Central Government Budget
Regulations explaining how reporting by exception should be
organised.
We recommend that the ministers determine whether their RWTs
adequately assure aspects of operational management that are of
public interest. We also recommend that the ministers inform
parliament of their supervision of operational management.
We recommend that the ministers continue to press RWTs to publish
their annual reports.