Accountability & Governance for New Accounting Officers

To support Accounting or Accountable Officers (AO), the HM Treasury has published “The Accounting Officer’s Survival Guide”. The use of ‘survival’ implies tremendous duties and responsibilities placed on the AO. There is a list of essential duties of an AO, as well as a list of personal responsibilities AO need to take ownership of. This ranges from specific areas such as information management and procurement to broader areas such as working with the board and making difficult decisions. AOs are expected to use ‘the accounting officer lens’ to assess an initiative or activity meet the required standards as expected in public sector accountability.

In this virtual training, our trainer Bill Malloy, will provide in-depth information on what are AOs duties and personal responsibilities in practice. The training materials will be adapted to reflect the governance framework and context each AO participant operate in, especially AOs from the devolved administrations. Learning points will be illustrated through the use of real life case studies.

Key features:

• Who is an Accounting or Accountable Officer?
• What are Accounting or Accountable Officer’s personally responsible for?
• How can their team and their Board support Accounting or Accountable Officer?
• What are expected to be proper conduct of public business in various guidance?
• External scrutiny by National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee (including the devolved regions)
• Understand the accountability relationship between their Board and their sponsoring department

Who is this virtual course for:

This virtual course is designed for Chief Executives of public bodies who often hold the Accounting (or Accountable) Officer position. Those who support the Accounting Officer would find this course useful as it will give them insights into how their role can strengthen governance and assurance.