Gordon Ferrier charts CIPFA’s support for training in developing countries Education and training for public sector finance staff is an essential component of public financial management.
While short courses and other training initiatives have an undoubted part to play, there can be no substitute for programmes designed according to the requirements of International Accounting Education Standards, delivered by qualified and experienced staff.
Given the specialist nature of PFM education and training it is not appropriate to rely entirely on staff with experience and expertise in training for the private sector, although such staff can represent a valuable resource on which to build when designing and implementing training schemes.
In Bangladesh, CIPFA is working as part of a team supporting the Strengthening public expenditure management programme of the World Bank. The primary aim is to strengthen the capacity of the Financial Management Academy of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of Bangladesh, to train students enrolled on courses leading to examination and certification by CIPFA. To date, some 170 students have enrolled. An alliance with the Dhaka training college LCBS will help to ensure the sustainability of the programme, by creating a resource to support training.
In a novel initiative to identify the competencies required of PFM staff working in the Philippines government, CIPFA with the support of WYG International and national consultants has developed a competency model for finance staff as part of the PFM reform roadmap. Making these reforms sustainable requires strengthening the capacity of government, a critical challenge.
Like many other governments around the world, the Philippines and its ministries, departments and agencies have historically engaged in piecemeal and largely uncoordinated training initiatives. Implementing the roadmap demonstrated a need to rise above the day-to day pressures of task- and project-specific training and to take a more holistic view of the competencies required in the Philippines.
The competency model covered the five main disciplines: budgeting, procurement, accounting, auditing and cash management. It concentrated on key competencies, recognising the available time and budgetary constraints. Within each discipline the necessary competencies were identified at five levels, reflecting increasing amounts of discretion about how the job is done and the complexity of the operating environment.
Since 2010 CIPFA has also been supporting the modernisation of the Federal Treasury Academy at Orozo in Nigeria. The finance training arm of the federal government had previously offered its own qualification as the main way to provide government finance staff with the necessary knowledge and skills to operate effectively.
The basis of CIPFA’s support was its suite of International Public Financial Management qualifications and early stages of the support programme have concentrated on equipping staff at the academy with the technical and other skills needed to provide tuition to students enrolled on the programme. The IPFM suite has a very distinct public sector orientation, making it particularly attractive to the accountant general, whose staff form the majority of those being trained.
A consistent thread running through all these examples is the need to offer distinctively public sector solutions to long-term PFM capacity development efforts.
Alternatives, such as encouraging staff to take courses that develop solely commercial skills or providing courses focused on task specific technical skills, have been tried and found wanting.
While it is important that government be business-like in its operations and financial management, government is not business. Providing services often involves transactions that do not result in inflows of economic resources to the government. Accountancy training based on bilateral flows of resources lack the capacity to deal with that particular aspect of public financial management.
There are significant commonalities, of course, between financial management in the public and private sectors. But for those elements of the business of government that are ‘proudly public sector’ there is no substitute for PFM education and training that recognises these essential differences.
