Auditor criticises governance of public services
PUBLIC services in Wales are “over-governed” and their accountability should be streamlined, according to the Auditor General for Wales.
In a speech given at Swansea University’s Morgan Academy, Adrian Crompton said: “Good governance underpins how resources are managed, how decisions are made, how services are delivered and the impact they have, both now and in the future.
“When governance is done well, it builds trust; it improves services; and protects the rights and needs of people. But in Wales, the governance landscape is complex and of varying quality.”
Mr Crompton pointed out that some public service structures dated back to medieval times while others had evolved more recently – the NHS since the 1940s, the National Assembly in 1999, the “bonfire of the quangos” in 2004 and the creation of new bodies like Natural Resources Wales in 2012, for example.
He said: “We’re small and that should be a factor we use to our advantage. We have a considerable, and growing, degree of freedom through devolution – but all too often we choose to add complexity into the system.
“As a direct result, public services in Wales are overgoverned, which frustrates our ability to reap the benefits of our small size, our freedoms and our potential agility.
“Surely, if we had a blank sheet of paper, we wouldn’t make it look like this?”
One area where scrutiny should be improved, suggested the Auditor General, was over organisations outside the public sector that receive large amounts of public money, including third sector bodies, private companies and universities.
He said: “Many problems could be traced to flawed procurement or disposal processes or failed grant-funded opportunities.
“The audit issues that we’ve had to report on have included insufficient consideration of oversight arrangements and striking an appropriate balance between autonomy and intervention; insufficient clarity around how governance arrangements should operate in practice; and not having a consistent and shared understanding and commitment to ethical standards and conduct... Unclear governance arrangements create risk. And the sheer diversity of governance arrangements within and between bodies involved in public service delivery serves to increase that risk.”