| 5. ACCOUNTABILITY |
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| 5.1 The Scotland Act requires
the Parliament to provide for the designation of officials to be answerable
to it in respect of the expenditure and receipts of the Scottish Administration.
Westminster employs such a system where heads of Government Departments
and of Executive Agencies are normally appointed as "Accounting Officers"
for the organisations for which they are responsible. The Permanent Secretary
of The Scottish Office is appointed "Principal Accounting Officer".
The heads of each individual Scottish Office Departments (eg the Health
Department) are appointed as "Additional Accounting Officers"
and the heads of Executive Agencies as "Agency Accounting Officers".
In addition, Accounting Officers have the option of themselves appointing
the senior full time officials in non-departmental public and similar bodies
as accounting officers. |
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| 5.2 The Accounting Officer
system serves a number of purposes. Its primary role is often seen as the
provision of a mechanism whereby the Committee of Public Accounts can call
upon representatives of the Administration to account for the actions of
their organisation. The Accounting Officer system also fulfils other roles.
Notably, it gives officials a distinct status, separate from the Ministers
they serve. It also places certain duties upon each Accounting Officer.
For example, an official who is instructed by a Minister to act in a way
that breaches the requirements of regularity and propriety or which would
be poor value for money must first report this to the Committee of Public
Accounts. The duties of an Accounting Officer are given in full in the memorandum
entitled "The Responsibilities of an Accounting Officer" which
is at Annex L. |
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| 5.3 FIAG has concluded
that the Scottish Parliament should set up a similar system to that used
by Westminster. Therefore, FIAG recommends that senior officials within
the Scottish Administration are designated as 'Accountable Officers".
This term reflects more accurately the role such individuals would have
in being accountable to the Parliament for the actions of the Scottish Administration.
(Although the term 'Accounting Officer" is well understood in Government
circles it tends to indicate a more specialist financial role and is hence
somewhat misleading to the lay person.) FIAG recommends that the permanent
head of the Scottish Administration is automatically designated as Principal
Accountable Officer on appointment He or she should then be responsible
for appointing other Accountable Officers throughout the rest of the Administration.
These officials could then be required to account for the actions of the
Administration both to the Audit Committee and to any subject committee
considering a value for money report produced by the AGS. |
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| 5.4 There are various views over
the number of Accountable Officers that are needed and the frequency with
which they should be required to account for the actions of their commands.
There is a conflict between the need to ensure that Parliament can summon
officials with a sufficiently large span of responsibility and the time
that it takes officials who are in overall charge of an area to be briefed
on the detail of management decisions before they appear before a committee.
If a very small number of officials are appointed, a significant amount
of their time might be spent in the preparation and delivery of committee
briefings. This could have a very real impact on the management of the Administration. |
| should be able to appoint Additional
Accountable Officers. Normally these would be senior officials responsible
for a discrete area of the Administration, such as the Chief Executive of
an Executive Agency. |
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| 5.6 There will be occasions when
a topic under consideration is of a specialist nature. In such instances,
it may be helpful for a committee to be briefed by the manager(s) directly
involved with the issue. Therefore FIAG recommends a mechanism whereby
committees are able to liaise with the Administration to ensure that, in
addition to or instead of the Accountable Officer concerned, other relevant
officials can be called to give evidence. This would help
to make it clear that, while only the most senior members of the Administration
are appointed as Accountable Officers, all those in government service are
(and must be seen as) responsible for their actions. |
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| 5.7 FlAG wishes to ensure however,
that a system of Accountable Officers is not developed simply to call officials
to give evidence to Parliament in the event that something is seen to go
wrong. Instead, the system should be seen as a way of promoting a
free flow of information between Parliament and the Administration and the
sharing of good practice should be an integral part of the process. |
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