Management, Board of Directors, to modernise business trends in Audit Service
Management of the Ghana Audit Service in collaboration with its Board of Directors has initiated strategies to modernise business trends, to revitalize and re-engineer the Service, Mr. Richard Quartey, Auditor-General of Ghana, has said.
He said the project that the Service would undertake in collaboration with the National Audit Office of United Kingdom, would include performance management and appraisal framework as well as resource management system that aimed to achieve the vision of the Audit Service.
Mr. Quartey made these known when he planted a tree and laid blocks for the construction of an Audit Office for Sissala East District capital at Tumu on Tuesday.
The visit was also to afford the management and Board Members the opportunity to familiarise and acquaint themselves with issues and problems pertaining to the execution of their mandate so as to take the needed business decisions to create the right environment for improved productivity in the Audit Service.
Mr. Quartey said the initiatives and modernisation processes were geared towards the achievement of the vision of the Audit Service.
He said that the vision of the Service was to become one of the leading Supreme Audit Institutions in the world, deliver professional, excellent and cost effective auditing service.
The Auditor-General said the performance management and appraisal framework was an avenue for the staff to contribute their quota towards the achievement of the strategic objective of the Service through setting targets flowing from the objectives and vision of the Service.
Executing those targets and appraising performance in the achievement or otherwise of the target was aimed to correct weaknesses and build on strengths for a better performance, Mr. Quartey explained.
The resource management system was also a simple time sheet introduced to collect information about the time or hours worked for by staff and that would helped the Service prepared evidence based budget by costing the various jobs, sub-jobs and tasks carried out by staff of the Service.
Mr. Quartey said Management and Board of Directors of the Service had also introduced refresher courses to improve its human resource base and the understanding of the initiatives so as to enable the staff complete forms associated with the framework.
He said management has taken note all the issues raised by staff during the refresher courses, especially those regarding staffing and staff mix, succession planning, job descriptions, logistics and infrastructure as well as volume of paper work that heads of supervisors had to contend with.
The unprofessional behaviour of some staff members who communicate their activities to clients, thereby making it difficult to plan, and disclosure of information about work schedules of staff at the various auditee institutions was also a source of worry to the Service.
Mr. Quartey said management was committed to addressing those issues and advised staff to follow the tenets and principles of the performance management and appraisal framework.
The Framework has emphasised among others that subordinates work with and not for superiors, hence targets would be set and finalized by means of discussion between superior and subordinate.
Mr. Quartey called for strict adherence to the tenets and principles of the framework, to help reduce the enormity of superior and subordinate disputes, which could affect the implementation of the framework.
He asked superiors to consider their subordinates as partners working towards a common goal, and to regard the target setting and appraisal exercises as avenues to improve performance of subordinates rather than avenue to impose their authority.
Source: GNA