Nation Building Fund audit soon come

(CNS): The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) has published its revised schedule of the work for the next three years. With plans to review a catalogue of government departments and entities, the public spending watchdog said it would be releasing its review of the controversial Nation Building Fund (NBF) in the next few weeks. Auditor General Alastair Swarbrick said that in the first half of this year reports on the high school projects, land management, social assistance programmes and reviews of Cayman Airways, the airports and civil aviation would also be published.

The NBF was established by the premier at the time, McKeeva Bush, in 2010 and caused considerable controversy. Large sums of public cash were given to churches and charities, which appeared not to be based on any fixed criteria. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were also given to students for scholarships, bypassing the existing criteria-based system to award publicly-funded scholarships via the Education Council. Bush came in for much criticism over the fund and was accused of directly interfering in the decision about who would receive cash and why.

Swarbrick has not yet given a specific date for the publication of this report but has indicated it should be released shortly.

Future plans include examining government revenue collection, which has never been done before and published in the public domain. The audit office will also look at services provided to government by non-governmental organisations; charities and other associations that receive public money; human resource management; immigration; and legal aid, to name just a few topic areas.  Swarbrick called on the public to contact the office if there are areas of concern that they feel should be scrutinized more closely by his office.

The schedule sets out performance audits only and does not include the audit work that the office does on each government department’s annual financial accounts and the much-anticipated consolidated accounts.

Swarbrick explained that a schedule of planned audits was prepared in early 2014 based on an assessment of key issues. But over the last twelve months the environment has continued to change, he said, with movement on some major infrastructure projects, the publication of the EY report on the rationalization of the civil service and plans for government to enter into public private partnerships. The led to the review of the audit programme, which has been updated to reflect the developments and ensure it remains relevant.

“Strategically, the OAG has also been reflecting on how it can add further value through its work, and it is our intention, given available resources, to provide insight on major capital projects earlier in their life-cycle to further support government or public sector entities in addressing issues and driving increased public value,” he added.

As a result the office will be looking closely at plans to redevelop the airport, the building of the cruise ship piers, as well as how government tackles the dump.

OAG Performance Audit Programme 2015 to 2017 – Updated January 2015