Posted by the PEFA Secretariat
The seven PEFA partners met for their regular six-monthly Steering Committee meeting on December 11th and 12th. The meeting was hosted and chaired by the European Commission and held in Brussels.
The main item on the agenda was the preparation of the PEFA Program’s fourth phase. It was agreed that the fourth phase will cover a five year period starting July 1, 2012. Whilst the current activities of the program will continue - especially the services provided to users of the PEFA Framework - a number of new initiatives were also agreed to form part of Phase IV.
- An enhanced mechanism for confirming adequate quality assurance processes of the individual PEFA assessments will be introduced. This will address the issue of occasional emergence of assessments of doubtful quality. This new quality assurance process will be launched in the first half of 2012 and be referred to as ‘PEFA CHECK’.
- A comprehensive review of the PEFA Framework and subsequent updating of its content will take place during the initial years of Phase IV – starting later in 2012. This initiative will ensure that the PEFA Framework remains relevant to its users, whilst maintaining the features that have made it widely adopted across the world since its launch in 2005.
- Several initiatives were also agreed to broaden the interaction with the wide group of users of the PEFA Framework and the PEFA assessment reports in response to the Framework becoming a global public good. One such initiative is arrangement of an annual ‘Open Forum on PEFA’. The first one will mark the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Program and the launch of Phase IV. It is scheduled to take place in Miami, USA on May 3rd in connection with the ICGFM Conference on “PFM in the 21st century”. The event will provide an opportunity for the Program to provide a discussion forum for all interested parties on its current activities and services as well the future directions of the PEFA Program.
During the coming months, we will communicate further on each of these three developments.
The Steering Committee also prepared for the succession of the management of the PEFA Secretariat in connection with the transition to Phase IV. Frans Ronsholt, who has been the Head of Secretariat since April 2006, will retire in 2012. A vacancy announcement will be posted shortly by the World Bank.
The next ordinary meeting of the Steering Committee will take place in Washington DC in June 2012, hosted and chaired by the World Bank.
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