EUROPEAN PROFILES S.A

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TITLE OF PROJECT

Assessment of Financial Management Capability Maturity of Provincial Departments

Country:

South Africa

Project Period:

11/2008-12/2008

Project Value:

€ 125.562

No of Staff Provided:

1

Origin of Funding:

EC EDF

Name of Client/ Beneficiary:

National Treasury of South Africa

Description of Project:

The purpose of the assignment was originally to assess the capability maturity of provincial departments in financial management, risk management and internal audit (including audit committees), with a view to strengthening public financial management of departments in two provinces in South Africa, namely Gauteng Province and the Free State Province. The National Treasury has developed a Financial Management Capability Maturity Model, which should be used for this project with certain minor modifications.


However, during the project implementation it has not been possible to carry out in full the Assessment of the two provincial departments because when the model was introduced on a national level earlier in 2008, the weaknesses of the model became apparent. Thus, the Office of Accountant General (OAG) started to revise the Model together with the Consulting Company PriceWaterouseCoopers (PWC), who had originally developed the web-based version of the model and applied it on national departments. The new version of the model was not finalized when our Consultant's team arrived to the OAG in the end of November, 2008 and was therefore not in a state that could be subject to minor revisions from our point of view before applying it on the departments in the two provinces.


Against this background the Beneficiary asked our team of Experts to focus on the project on a realignment of the model, linking the questions to the different Levels of Control and also looking at the embedded weighting. Our consultancy has also introduced the Model to the provincial departments (Gauteng and Free State) and prepared the two provinces for the exercise before they are using the Model.

Services Provided:
  • Studying general background information, e.g. legal framework, PEFA report, AG reports
  • Studying information available on the Model including the framework the Model is based upon, e.g. list of questions and built-in logic of the Model, reports from application of Model on national level, the original Canadian model, the internal control framework
  • Meetings with stakeholders on National Level, e.g. OAG and AG
  • Reviewing the internal control framework and making recommendations based on international practice
  • Reviewing and making recommendation on the internal logic of the Model
  • Reviewing and making recommendations on the questions and the levels and weights attached to them
  • Introduce the Model to Gauteng and Free State Provinces and discuss options on how to apply the Model on provincial level in order to promote high quality of the assessment

Name of Partners:
  • DFC S.A.
  • SOGEROM