07 May 2004
Devolution has increased the exposure of public sector managers and senior civil servants, all of whom now 'manage in a goldfish bowl', Scotland's auditor general Bob Black said this week.
He warned that the increased exposure meant there was a strong chance the media would report on any significant weaknesses.
The Scottish Parliament had intensified the process of holding to account through its committee system and had raised expectations about the quality and coverage of financial and performance reporting expected of public bodies in Scotland.
Black was addressing members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland at a conference on the funding of charities in Glasgow on May 6.
He said the public audit regime that was now applied to most public bodies in Scotland had a wide scope.
He stressed that public money brought with it public accountability expectations that could be onerous for organisations that received public funding. He said there had to be clarity in relation to these expectations so that unnecessary bureaucracy was avoided in the arrangements for holding to account.
Stressing that councils now had a legal duty of Best Value, Black said the requirement to demonstrate value for money extended to money that councils and public bodies passed on to charities. He pointed out that Scottish councils in 2001/02 provided funding of around £200m to 12,000 organisations.
Black warned that, for larger charities, long-term success, and even survival, would be partly dependent on their ability to report reliably to stakeholders that they were delivering best value from the funding they received.
PFmay2004
