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• Identifying and equipping finance staff, managers and the Leadership Team with<br />
the financial competencies and expertise needed to manage the business both<br />
currently and in the future.<br />
• Ensuring that the Head of Profession role for all finance staff in the organisation<br />
is properly discharged.<br />
• Acting as the final arbiter on application of professional standards.<br />
Principle 5: The CFO in a public service organisation must be professionally qualified<br />
and suitably experienced.<br />
3D.1: Reflection<br />
Consider planning, budgeting, monitoring, reporting, and financial control. In your<br />
organization, how are the various responsibilities of finance and accounting arranged?<br />
How is the work of financial control, financial inspection, external audit, and internal audit<br />
coordinated?<br />
Consider the five CIPFA Principles and criteria. How closely does the CFO and finance and<br />
accounting function in your organization satisfy those criteria?<br />
3D.2 Roles of External Audit<br />
A Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) is established to undertake external audits of public sector<br />
entities and report to parliament either directly or via a committee, council, or similar authority or<br />
body.<br />
A supreme audit institution (SAI), or national audit institution, fulfils the independent and<br />
technical public sector external audit function that is typically established within a country’s<br />
constitution or by the supreme law-making body. A SAI is responsible for overseeing and<br />
holding government to account for its use of public resources, together with the legislature<br />
and other oversight bodies. SAIs have different models and institutional arrangements<br />
regarding the legislature, executive and judiciary. Where there is more than one body<br />
fulfilling the public sector external audit role, the SAI is usually distinguished as possessing<br />
the strongest constitutional guarantees of independence.<br />
In line with their status as independent external bodies, SAIs require full discretion and<br />
sufficiently broad mandates, although this differs depending on the SAI country context. In<br />
order to provide expertise and credible findings on the use and management of public<br />
resources, SAIs require the ability to access all relevant documents, to work onsite, and to<br />
follow up with audited entities on their findings.<br />
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