When Standards and Harmonisation are Missing: The Road to EPSAS
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Good governance and quality of public administrations is recognisably in the interests of the citizens and Europe’ Member States. It achieves maximum value from finite public funds and creates a public-private interface that increases employment and growth. Worldwide, the evidence is irrefutable: economies with high productivity and a high income per capita have the most effective and efficient public institutions.
Europe’s administrations currently face a triple challenge: to deliver better with less (meet societal and business needs in times of tighter budgets), to adapt their service provision to demographic, technological and societal changes, and to improve the business climate through fewer yet smarter regulations and better services in support of growth and competitiveness.
Government financial sustainability therefore remains key across Europe. However, there is often a lack of transparency in public finances, which creates problems for decision-making as well as for accountability and democratic scrutiny all over the EU.
Harmonisation or standardisation of key performance indicators and public-sector accounting and reporting can help to minimise future economic risks and shocks. The accounting systems currently used in the EU countries also determine the information they make available to investors. Complete and harmonised accounting and reporting would support the needed transparency, sustainability and lower cost of capital.
The European Commission is working together with the Member States on what is called the European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS). It has proceeded in two phases: (1) increasing fiscal transparency in the short to medium term by encouraging and supporting accruals reforms in Member States, while developing a draft EPSAS framework with a view to (2) addressing comparability within and between Member States via the EPSAS initiative in the medium to longer term. EPSAS should be a forward-looking reform to improve accountability and decision-making. For instance, it will provide a complementary view of the impact of investments, which will enable better financial management of assets and liabilities through recognition and measurement on the basis of generally accepted financial accounting principles.
Change management will be an important factor in this process, as accruals will have a wide impact on each public organisation (e.g. IT systems, relation to management information system and its usage for decision makers) and will lead to an organisation-wide rethink. Thus, this change (to EPSAS) must, and will, lead to a cultural shift within public administration that may contrast with some administrative traditions.
How will this practical seminar help you?
The seminar will provide participants with a comprehensive overview of the main key concepts of EPSAS and how these affect the financial management of national, regional and city and local governments. With its strong practical focus, the seminar represents a unique chance to understand how to capture the opportunities of what is sometimes considered just a (“simple”) revision of accounting by and for accounting experts. The move to accrual instead offers an interesting window of opportunity to manage resources more efficiently and more sustainable, with concrete benefits for citizens.
Change management in which sound financial management (incl. EPSAS) plays a decisive role remains key in this process. Other important elements such as IT and questions on ‘How do we maximise benefits (e.g. money saving) by implementing EPSAS?’ will also be addressed in detail.
This will not be just from a normative angle but will also provide participants with concrete comparative examples from some leading European governments that have already applied these principles at different levels of maturity and have experienced the multidimensional benefits.
Who will benefit most?
The practical seminar is addressed to all levels of administrations: not only to CFOs and CEOs and their associates of city governments, but also to regional and national administrations (e.g. at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Treasury, Interior, Transport, Infrastructure etc.) that work in the field of or are close to accounting and financial management.
It will also be of interest to academics and educational institutions, national executive agencies, international financing institutions and service providers (including NGOs) involved in EU-financed and other projects.
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The goal of this highly-practical course/workshop extending over two full days is to present:
Does your organisation have qualified experts who are willing and able to properly manage evaluation activities?
How can you ensure high-quality evaluations?
Does your organisation have qualified experts who are willing and able to design, manage and monitor evaluation activities? Will you be able to ensure high quality evaluation? Will evaluation results really provide evidence for decision-making and improve policies and programmes?
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