The Auditor General, Alastair Swarbrick, made public on Wednesday January 22^nd 2014 five reports on Governance in the Cayman Islands Government. The five reports describe how governance works in the Cayman Islands Government and provide an assessment of how well it is working.

The five reports include:

•          Key Messages (an overview of the other four reports)

•          Describing the Framework (a study of how governance works)

•          A Survey of Statutory Authority and Government Company (SAGC) Governance

•          How Core Government Manages Resources

•          The Accountability of Statutory Authorities and Government Companies

“The Constitution and the legislation of the Cayman Islands provide a solid foundation for good governance,” said the Auditor General. “our audit work found, however, that the implementation of the laws falls short or are overridden creating significant risks for government operations.”

The Auditor General noted the following areas that require improvement:

•          Compliance – significant weaknesses with the implementation of policies and practices

•          Complexity – some areas of the governance framework are too complex to implement effectively

•          Achieving results – the governance framework focuses too much on activities and not the achievement of results

•          Roles and responsibilities – the governance framework is not always well understood by the people who are involved in its implementation and management

•          Ethics and values – government has not done enough to embed the necessary ethics and values in its decision making processes

•          SAGC accountability – the arrangements to hold SAGCs to account are weak and core government is challenged to hold these entities to account

•          SAGC governance – policies and practices in SAGCs have significant weaknesses and gaps leading to risks of poor performance and poor value for money

“The five reports I have made public today are quite technical and will require time by Government to address,” said Mr. Swarbrick. “however, I believe that there will be opportunities to manage government more efficiently and effectively if my recommendations are implemented. Good governance leads to good results and, therefore, I look forward to working with Government to address the weaknesses I found”.

More information regarding this report can be obtained by contacting Martin Ruben at the Office of the

Auditor General at (345) 244-3206. A copy of the report is available at www.auditorgeneral.ky

EDITOR: iNews Cayman will be giving a breakdown of each of the reports over the next few days.

However, the Auditor General has said even though the governance framework is sound, government is simply not following or properly implementing the rules as they are designed. Government is not accountable how it spends public money and there is no strategic policy development to support its strategic policy statement.

Because of this the money the Legislative Assembly members vote for to pay for  government projects it cannot be determined if the money is well spent or worse wasn’t actually required.

Swarbick has made 12 recommendations.