and an activity dictionary that truly
reflects the actual work that is done to
achieve results. It will also have a costing
module in its FM & C system to enable
expenditures to be linked to activities,
and the resulting activity costs to be
assigned on a causal basis to performance
targets (outputs and outcomes in the
MAF) and to other cost objects, such as
clients and services.
• While the concepts in cost management
are fairly straight forward, they appear to
be extremely hard to apply in the public
sector. I believe one of the main reasons
for this is that an expenditure culture still
exists. The primary interest appears to be
in how much has been spent by a department
or program, rather than what it
costs to deliver its services and outputs.
In the federal government this culture
will be difficult to change as long as
appropriations continue to be authorized
and managed on an expenditure rather
than an accrual basis.
• A good cost management framework not
only enables the linking of resources to
results for accountability purposes, but
also provides better information for planning,
alternative service delivery analysis,
pricing of services, and other critical
decisions.
Risk Management
• This second pillar is clearly related to FM
& C, particularly to control. This is
because control is a function of risk. The
only reason for having controls is to
guard against unacceptable things happening.
Thus, we have the FAA and TB
policies and regulations. These only exist
to help alleviate the possibility of Ministers
and public servants doing the wrong
things, such as misappropriating or overspending
funds.
• FM Controls are costly, and this is why
they should be subjected to risk management
techniques before being implemented.
A key requirement is to size the
risk, as illustrated in Figure 4.
• FM & C also uses risk management to
help in the analysis of decisions, such as
how to minimize the risk of unfavourable
downstream financial consequences. A
good example of this would be where the
financial specialist, using life-cycle costing
methods, is able to show that the best