State accounting overhaul on track
The government is embarking on the biggest change in government accounting practices since the switch to resource accounting
Treasury minister Angela Eagle said the government had set a three-year
timetable to bring the government’s budgeting, forecasting and accounting
systems into line in the interests of ‘clarity, coherence, consistency and
transparency and therefore better accountability’.
Different systems are currently used to set the government’s control budgets,
present the annual estimates to parliament and publish audited resource
accounts.
The result, Eagle said, is that ‘it is not easy to compare planned
expenditure with actual expenditure’, with the differences causing ‘confusion
and inefficiency’.
Eagle said the project would see better alignment of budgets, estimates and
accounts.
‘I believe that it will be a welcome step towards making the various systems
easier to understand and more efficient to operate,’ Eagle said.
The Treasury will be working closely with the Public Accounts Committee and
the National Audit Office to make the accounting changes by the end of the
current expenditure round in 2010.