State property and funds earmarked for continuing education of pedagogical staff
Press release on completion of the auditing operation No. 06/02
The auditing operation was included in the Annual Audit Plan of the Supreme Audit Office (hereinafter referred to as “SAO”) for the year 2006 under No. 06/02. The auditing operation was managed and the audit conclusion drawn up by Mr. Jiří Kalivoda, Member of the SAO.
The aim of the auditing operation was to examine management of the State Budget funds and the resources from the European Social Fund as well as dealing with the state property particularly during Pedagogical Centres’ transformation.
The audited period covered the years 2004 to 2005 as well as previous or subsequent periods in certain cases of relevant connections.
The audited bodies were the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (hereinafter referred to as “MEYS”), the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (hereinafter referred to as “MLSA”), the National Institute for Further Education (hereinafter referred to as “NIFE”), and the Pedagogical Centre for Polish Minority Schools (hereinafter referred to as “PCPMS”).
Following shortcomings were found during the audit of management of the State Budget funds and dealing with the state property:
- Transferring pieces of state property, audited entities made irregularities concerning prices of the transferred real estates in the contracts on handover of state property and on rightfulness to deal with this property. The acquisition prices of transferred real estates in the contracts did not correspond with the acquisition prices recorded in accounting books.
- The NIFE did not record landing estates from transferred property of the cancelled pedagogical centres into accounting books separately and thereby failed to comply with the law on accounting. Prices of some landing estates were included in acquisition prices of buildings and thereby these landing estates were amortised in conflict with law.
- Managing of the state property, the NIFE failed to do that with appropriate care; it protected the state property from loss insufficiently, failed to specify a form of disposal of property suggested to discard, and it also failed to lay claims by a sufficiently effective way.
- The NIFE should manage nine state owned buildings due to the MEYS decision but it exploited four of them less then by 50% (the SAO already pointed out insufficient economising of property in the framework of auditing operation No. 02/07 “State budget funds for pedagogical centres’ activities”).
- The NIFE did not submit to the MEYS in determined terms fixed assets investment documentation for the final evaluation of relevant actions. The MEYS as an administrator of the programme did not ensure proper measures for fulfilling of these NIFE’s obligations, which are prescribed by generally binding regulation.
Auditors further found out that regional branches of the NIFE showed imbalance in ratio of offered and realised programmes and in numbers of participants visiting one realised event.
Auditing of the management of the European Social Fund resources brought no substantial irregularities or more serious shortcomings in administration and financing of national projects. Some not very significant deficiencies were found out. For example:
- The MEYS failed to arrange realization terms of the Human Resources Development Operational Programme between the MEYS and the NIFE in such a way, which was set down by the Agreement on activities delegation between the MLSA as the Managing Authority and the MEYS as Mediating subject.
- Manuals and guidelines of audited entities did not cover ways of electronic mail records keeping when such records are important evidence on operations executed.
- Formal deficiencies of public procurement biding and contracting.
- Inaccuracies in administrative records from the control sample of approvable expenses submitted for reimbursement.
- Up to the end of the SAO audit, the NIFE failed to control and evaluate co-operation with the project partner.
- Commencement of the National projects realization was delayed by about two months as a subsequence of the NIFE delaying of funds transfer for the National projects.
The Mediating Subject (the MEYS) temporarily blocked some applications for payments particularly in cases, when applications contained erroneous data, incorrect accounting records and insufficiently evidenced purposefulness of overheads.
In one case, the Managing Authority returned to the Mediating Subject a payment requirement as a subsequence of deficiencies in the Monitoring report, which was submitted simultaneously with the payment requirement.