Integrating Quality Management Systems in Public Sector Financial Reporting Framework: a Developing Country’s Nightmare

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Good financial management is responsible for not only protecting, developing, using resources, pushing and maintaining economic growth and increasing income, but also managing effectively and efficiently all national resources. Dr Dang VanThanh, president Vietnam Association of Accountants and Auditors Public sector is the largest spender and employer in virtually every developing country and it sets the policy environment for the rest of the economy. It is presently challenged to provide high quality projects and services to its customers despite the difficult economic times leading to budgetary shortfalls. Demand for accountability of public resources has increased tenfold. Associated with this is the demand for efficient processes, consistently deployed and subject to continual improvement. Public financial reporting is absolutely critical to improving the quality of public service outcomes. It affects how funding is used to address national and local priorities, the availability of resources for investment and the cost-effectiveness of public services. Also, it is more than likely that the general public will have greater trust in public sector organizations if there is strong financial stewardship, accountability and transparency in the use of public funds. It is important for governments to get it right because it impacts on a broad range of areas including: Governance -accountability, comprehensiveness and transparency Operational management -value-for-money and budget management Fiduciary risk management - sustainability, ERM and oversight In addition, effective public financial reporting is important for decision making. Accurate financial information is often used as the mechanism to support decisions and ensure effective resource allocations. In recent years there have been reforms in the public sector because quality of public sector accountability, effectiveness and efficiency in service delivery and transparency was thought to contribute to development and despite improvements in public financial management and tax administration, direct measures to reduce corruption and enhance provision of services rarely succeeded. As organizations are growing and becoming more complex, they are confronted with a more dynamic and competitive environment and to maintain its survival, they must continuously respond to the environment. However, responding and ultimately reshaping the organization accordingly can be insufficient unless and until performance criteria is accounted for. Therefore it is imperative that for survival it is necessary for an organization to focus on quality improvement in order to survive. Quality Management Systems can be expressed as the organization structure, procedures, processes and resources needed to result into production of quality goods and services as per the expectations of the client in addition to being efficient, effective and economical. There are different types of Quality Management Systems in use all over the world. The baseline for all these Quality Management Systems is that they emphasize on some common factors such as client/customer focus, involvement of all stakeholders, the systems are process and procedure based, a systems approach is adopted, mutual and beneficial relationship with stakeholders and most importantly emphasis on continual improvement. The study therefore explored the need for QMS integration into the public sector financial reporting framework. The researchers conducted a desk review of documents both at country level and international level using journals, books and reports. The study concluded that it was important to include quality management systems into the public sector reporting framework The study recommended that in future any reforms that are introduced into the public sector reporting framework should include quality management systems.