Michael Dunkley vowed that a new financial instruction training programme would help to “restore a culture of compliance within the Civil Service”.

Speaking during Monday’s sitting of Parliament, the Premier said that the programme — created by the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Finance — aimed to move the civil service from having a “general awareness of financial instructions, to an intimate awareness of the contents of financial instructions and to cause individual officers within the service to know how to apply financial instructions to the delivery of services within their specific remit.”

He added: “The programme moves the service from a centralised financial training programme, delivered on an occasional basis, by the Department of Human Resources, for persons who opted in, to a much more decentralised department-specific mandatory training programme delivered routinely by the ministry controls.

I think this will certainly increase the level of awareness and compliance and the outcome of results. I am delighted to see some progress.

“Several ministries have already commenced implementation and it is expected that programme will become fully operational across the service in the coming months. I believe this is very positive social-service leadership, making it clear and leading by example to underly the importance of following financial instructions.”

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