The Northern Cape Provincial Legislature will be hosting the 13th Annual Conference of the Association of Public Accounts Committee better known as APAC from 4 to 6 October 2011 in Kimberley. The Association of Public Accounts Committees (APAC) comprises of all the nine provincial Public Accounts Committees and Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, and was established in 1997.
The association is modelled along the Canadian and Australian public accounts associations.
Public Accounts Committees ensure that public sector institutions account for failure to remain within their budgets; spend according to the purposes determined by government, legislatures and Parliament and are held accountable if they do not comply with the relevant laws and other regulations.
The aim of this conference is to raise awareness among stakeholders of the importance of effective oversight; facilitate exchange of information and best practices and, to discuss issues of mutual concern.
Undoubtedly, the upcoming conference of the Association of Public Accounts Committees in Kimberly will be followed with keen interest, particularly because this is where the first APAC conference in 2003 took place. It is also in Kimberly where the idea of public accounts committees at Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional level was conceived.
The conference will begin on 04 to 06 October 2011 in Kimberley. The delegates to conference will include amongst others, Southern Africa Development Community Organisation of Public Accounts Committees (SADCOPAC), East Africa Association of PACs (EAAPAC), West Africa Association of PACs (WAAPAC) and the international associations such as Australasian Association of Public Accounts Committees and Canadian Council Public Accounts Committees. Municipal Public Accounts Committees will also be invited to conference.
This year’s conference main theme is “Enhancing Service Delivery through Application of Mechanisms that Strengthen Oversight and Accountability”
The other sub-themes are strengthening governance structures in order to enhance transparency, accountability and oversight in the public sector, engaging the public, Civil Society Organisations and the media about Public Account s Committees (PAC) work as well as building APAC and effective and efficient PACs thereby enhancing oversight in the public sector.
Some of the issues that the conference will be answering under the theme dealing with the strengthening of the governance structure include the current state of governance within the public sector and the legislative frameworks that are in place to aid strengthening of governance in the public sector.
Under the theme building APAC and effective and efficient PAC the current state of APAC in regards to each role of championing oversight in the public sector as well as the current state of PACs with regards to being effective and efficient will be discussed.
Many South Africans will, justifiably so, be keen to hear what the APAC conference has to say about these issues.
APAC will also take stock of the past year and assess the implementation of the resolutions taken during last year’s conference in Durban. At that conference, APAC resolved, among others, to develop a framework that would help with the formation of Municipal Public Accounts Committees, that Public Accounts Committees should be in a position to investigate any matter within their mandate, to encourage co-operation between Public Accounts Committees and other committees and to undertake training for members of Municipal Public Accounts Committees and their support staff.
The speakers list for this year’ conference covers quite a wide spectrum, we expecting that the Deputy President of the Country will accept our invitation, the Office of the Auditor General, Public Service Commission (PSC), Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), South African Local Government Association (SALGA), National Treasury and South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) are amongst the many that are invited.
For further information please contact:
Celine Morolong
Tel: 053 839 8011
Cell: 082 8266792
E-mail: apac@agsa.co.za/ nhlasa@agsa.co.za
