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11 October 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo Johan Roux
JN Boshoff Memorial lecture
From left: Prof Hendri Kroukamp (Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Science), Prof Puleng LenkaBula (Vice-Rector: Institutional Change, Student Affairs, and Community Engagement), Kimi Makwetu (Auditor-General South Africa), and Dr Lyndon du Plessis (Head of the Department of Public Administration and Management).
It is reported R390 billion in irregular expenditure has been accumulated over the past 10 years since the 2008-09 financial year. Local government has experienced an upward trend from R3 billion to R21 billion, while an increase from R1 billion to R51 billion has been seen at provincial government level.

Fixing the crisis 

South Africa’s global credit quality has deteriorated as a result of poor financial performance.  This is evidenced by the numerous downgrades from Moody’s over the past few years. The Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu proposes that accountability has the potential to resolve the issue.

Makwetu presented this year’s JN Boshoff Memorial Lecture titled: Accountability as a basis for service delivery and economic growth at the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein Campus on Wednesday 9 October 2019. 

“The whole idea of accountability as a basis for service delivery and economic growth is a pursuit that needs to be tackled from different angles because auditors are not going to succeed if the tone at the top in the institutions is not at the right place.”

Auditing irregularities remain a cause for concern 
The Auditor-General referred to auditing irregularities as an imbalance between people, money, and material. He alluded to the need to “narrow the space for the abuse of public resources” by escalating the level of preventive controls so that materials are paid for and delivered. The Amendment Act becomes instrumental in achieving this.

President Cyril Ramaphosa proclaimed 1 April 2019 as the official commencement date of the Public Audit Amendment Act (Act No. 5 of 2018) which introduced new mechanisms to ensure that audit findings are properly addressed and recommendations are implemented.  The Act is a tool to root out material irregularities such as fraud, theft, non-compliance with or contravention of legislation, or a breach of a fiduciary duty.

Expanding the scope of auditors

The Act empowers auditors to enforce accountability in the form of referring irregularities to public bodies for further investigation, recommending binding remedial actions, and issuing certificates of debt.

According to Makwetu accountability means that citizens’ rights to service delivery are respected. “Improved accountability speaks directly to the government’s ability to appropriately manage public resources to the benefit of the citizens they serve. It created a solid foundation for service delivery to take place and for the citizens to tangibly experience and feel the vision set by the constitution.” 

For service delivery and economic growth to manifest, accountability in the public sector needs to become second nature. The role of auditors in ensuring this shift is therefore of utmost importance.

News Archive

Harvard couple to present lectures on Biostatistics and Mathematics at the UFS
2015-12-07


Professor Donald Rubin

Prof Donald Rubin (John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics at Harvard University) and Elizabeth Zell (MStat - mathematical statistician in the Division of Bacterial Diseases) will visit the University of the Free State (UFS) where they will present lectures on their respective work.

Over his prestigious academic career, Prof Don Rubin’s 400 publications and 13 books have earned him around 180 000 citations at an h-index of 113. He is one of the most cited statisticians/mathematicians/economists/psychologists in the world over the last 10 -15 years. He has supervised 35 PhD candidates as sole-supervisor, 17 more as co-supervisor, with a further eight in the pipeline.

Prof Rubin who will meet with UFS academics in the Department of Mathematics and Actuarial Sciences will also deliver a lecture: Rerandomisation to improve covariate balance in experiments.

Randomised experiments are the “gold standard” for estimating causal effects, yet in practice, chance imbalances often exist in covariate distributions between treatment groups. If covariate data are available before units are exposed to treatments, these chance imbalances can be mitigated by first checking covariate balance before the physical experiment takes place. Provided a precise definition of imbalance has been specified in advance, unbalanced randomisations can be discarded, followed by a rerandomisation. This process can continue until a randomisation yielding balance according to the definition is achieved. By improving covariate balance, rerandomisation provides more precise and trustworthy estimates of treatment effects.

Prof Rubin received an honorary professorship from the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the UFS.


Elizabeth Zell

The lecture will take place on:
Date: Tuesday 8 December 2015
Time: 16:00
Venue: Albert Wessels Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus

Zell earned her Master’s degree in Statistics at North Carolina State University, and for more than two decades, was an active bio-statistical researcher in various offices of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Since 2013, she has been the Principal Statistician and President of Stat-Epi Associates, Inc. Her 150+ publications have earned her 14 500 citations at an h-index of over 50. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and, in 2010, she received the Statistics Section Government Award for outstanding contributions to statistics and public health by the American Public Health Association. During her career at the CDC, she earned more than 20 CDC research awards and honours.

She will deliver two lectures at the UFS. The first is entitled A Potential Outcomes Approach to Documenting the Public Health Impact of the Introduction of PCV13 for the Prevention of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease. The topic of her second lecture is: Assessing the Effectiveness of Intrapartum Antibiotic Prophylaxis for Prevention of Early-Onset Group B Streptococcus Disease through Propensity Score Design

Elizabeth’s lectures will take place on:
Date: Wednesday 9 December 2015
Time: 10:45 and 13:00
Venue: West Block 111, Bloemfontein Campus

For more information, please contact Dr Michael von Maltitz at VMaltitzMJ@ufs.ac.za.

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