Control and Management System Baselines

To provide a basis for conducting assessments of central management and control systems to support efforts by the European Commission in the area of EU enlargement. The baselines assess civil service management, public financial management, and the policy-making system. They are used by the European Commission for assessing EU candidate countries and other countries of interest.

The baselines are assessment tools, either in the form of a questionnaire or a narrative description. They are used to generate narrative reports. Sigma staff carry out the assessments through interviews with government authorities, information from the EU and other donors, foreign and local public analyses, and work with other sectors of the OECD.

There are 6 control and management system baselines:
• Public sector financial control baseline
• Public procurement management systems baseline
• Public expenditure management systems baseline
• Public sector external audit baseline
• Civil service baseline
• Policy-making and co-ordination machinery baseline

They vary in format and types of content, from a series of questions to more narrative form. Some examples are:
There should be an effective central administrative body with the capacity and authority:
• to ensure that co-ordination arrangements are enforced;
• to provide adequate logistical support to the centre of decision-making;
• to ensure the recording and circulation of decisions;
• to monitor the implementation of decisions (including the necessary secondary legal instruments).

See http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/57/32/35007180.pdf