Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah said in
Parliament on Monday (13 Sep) that it will be “unrealistic” to expect zero lapses in the use of public funds, given the scale and complexity of Government operations.
“With 150,000 officers in the public service handling hundreds of thousands of transactions each year, and more than 2,000 Government IT systems built over the years by different vendors and using different technologies, human errors and process gaps will occur from time to time,” she argued.
On the recurring lapses, Ms Indranee noted that these lapses have been in the areas of procurement and contracts management, IT controls and grants management, which share common factors like the scale and complexity of operations, a constantly changing operating environment, high volume of transactions and multiple touchpoints.
“What is important therefore is that we must have the means to pick up such lapses and address them in an upfront and transparent manner,” she added.
According to Ms Indranee, in the past five years, six agencies have been mentioned in the AGO report for recurring lapses which are mainly in the areas of procurement, contract management and IT controls.
“These are the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Education (MOE), the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the Ministry of Health (MOH), and the People’s Association (PA).
“The lapses arose from gaps in agencies processors and human factors,” she noted.