Приложение 3: Multi-annual objectives

This Annex reports on the progress achieved in 2008 on the new and ongoing actions identified in the 2007 Synthesis Report to address major cross-cutting management issues. New actions introduced as a follow up to the 2008 Synthesis report are indicated in bold italics.

(Initiatives stemming from previous years' Synthesis Reports, which were completed in 2007 or before, have been deleted from this table.)

Internal control systems and performance management
Subject	Objective	Initiative(s) to meet the objective	Responsible service(s) and timetable	Progress made in 2008
Internal control	1. Achieving an effective internal control system and ownership of internal control concepts and processes at all levels in each DG and service.	In October 2007 the Commission adopted a Communication revising the Internal Control Standards and underlying framework17, setting out 16 new internal control standards for effective management to replace the original set of 24 standards from 1 January 2008. Services may prioritise certain Standards with the aim of strengthening the basis of the annual declaration of assurance of the Directors-General. Furthermore the compliance reporting was simplified; moving from full reporting to exception based reporting on non-compliance.	All DGs	Continuous action In 2008, the Commission conducted an analysis of the impact of the "Action Plan towards an Integrated Internal Control Framework"18, adopted in early 2006 as part of the Commission's strategy to obtain an unqualified DAS. The final report was published in February 2009. The Communication noted significant progress in strengthening internal control systems during this Commission's mandate. Services reported on the effectiveness of the implementation of the prioritised standards for the first time in the 2008 Annual Activity Reports.

Annual activity reports and Synthesis	2. Promoting Commission’s accountability through annual activity reports and their synthesis solidly based on assurances from managers.	Assessment of critical success factors affecting the quality of AARs and take appropriate measures (training for staff involved in the preparation of AARs, further improvement of Standing Instructions)	BUDG and SG By September 2009	New action
		To give the preparation of the AARs high priority, implementing the guidelines prepared by the central services	All DGs By April 2010	New action
Risk management	3. Establishing effective and comprehensive risk management making it possible to identify and deal with all major risks at service and Commission level and to lay down appropriate action to keep them under control, including disclosing resources needed to bring major risks to an acceptable level.	The Commission will further embed risk management in its regular management process and integrate risk assessment in its internal control systems.	BUDG, with all DGs	Continuous action Three years after its adoption, DG Budget undertook a limited review of the operation of the Commission's risk management framework. This indicated that the framework is well established and is understood and applied by management and was taken as a starting point by services for developing their own more specific guidelines and tools tailored for their needs. The review revealed no reasons for major change but pointed to the need to define more clearly the handling of cross-cutting risks, an interest in sharing information across services on risk management generally and on critical risks in particular, and a requirement for specialist risk management training linked to individual services' activities.
Residual risk	4. Taking further the concept of residual risk		DG BUDG together with concerned services	Completed In December 2008 the Commission adopted its Communication "Towards a common understanding of the concept of tolerable risk of error", with which the Commission took forward a concept first introduced by the Court of Auditors in its Opinion 2/2004 (the "single audit opinion"). This tolerable risk approach is intended to ensure an appropriate balance between the risk of not detecting errors and the costs of control to ensure that control systems are cost effective. The illustrative case studies presented covered Cohesion Policy and Rural Development. They indicated that the Court's standard 2% materiality threshold may not be appropriate for these policies, for which risk is high, and that a cost-effective tolerable risk level may lie around 5% for both policies.
		The Commission will study more policy areas and present concrete proposals for tolerable risk levels during 2010 as requested by the Discharge Authority.	DG BUDG together with concerned services By end 2010	New action The Communication mentioned above launched an inter-institutional debate on the tolerable risk of error and the Commission will study more policy areas and present concrete proposals for tolerable risk levels during 2010 as requested by the Discharge Authority.
Governance
Subject	Objective	Initiative(s) to meet the objective	Responsible service(s) and timetable	Progress made in 2008
Internal audit recommenda-tions	5. Ensuring a smooth implementation of accepted internal audit recommendations	New: Effective follow-up of critical and very important recommendations of IAS recommendations should be regularly monitored at senior management level, and fully integrated into regular management planning, especially the annual management plans.	All DGs concerned	New action
Regulatory agencies	6. Clarifying the respective roles and responsibilities of Commission services and regulatory agencies.	The input of all institutions is necessary to negotiate a comprehensive framework, to clarify the respective responsibilities of the institutions and of the regulatory agencies. This framework would be applicable to the creation of future agencies and, at a later stage, to those already in existence.	All DGs concerned with the assistance of SG and DG BUDG. End 2009	Continuous action In a Communication of March 200819, the Commission drew attention to the lack of a common vision on the role and functions of regulatory agencies. It announced a horizontal evaluation of the regulatory agencies by the end of 2009, a moratorium on creating new agencies and a review of its internal systems governing agencies.
Reservations	8. Ensuring strong follow-up of action plans related to the expressed reservations, notably for the progress to be made in 2009.	Directors-General will report on progress to the respective Commissioner in the context of the regular follow-up meetings on audit and control. The ABM Steering Group will closely monitor and regularly report to the College on the implementation of the remedial actions that delegated authorising officers have committed to carry out in their annual activity reports.	DGs concerned	Continuous action DGs report on the implementation of action plans in a given year in their annual activity report. This has been specifically mentioned in the standing instructions for the AARs. DGs were also invited to mention the actions to be taken in the coming year as a follow up to previous reservations. This requirement was included in the guidelines for the 2009 AMPs. For all reservations, delegated authorising officers have laid down appropriate action plans to solve the underlying weaknesses. They monitored the implementation of action plans and reported to the Commissioner responsible. The implementation of all action plans has also been monitored by the ABM Steering Group which invited Directors-General to report regularly to the Group on the state of play of their action plans. An outcome of the peer review of the 2008 AARs is the that the conclusion drawn by the Authorising Officer by Delegation (AOD) needs to be convincingly argued and the building blocks for assurance should be presented in a complete and logical manner, particularly as regards error rates detected by controls. Also, services calculating error rates on the basis of controls performed on high-risk areas of their activities need to present results of controls in lower-risk fields to justify the conclusion that the global exposure was lower than materiality
	namely:	Close coordination of actions concerning management and control weaknesses identified for the EU funds implemented by Bulgarian and Rumanian authorities, in order to ensure that underlying problems are solved and the management of EU funds is conducted in strict respect of all applicable rules and procedures.	ELARG, MARE, JLS, EMPL, AGRI, REGIO	New action
		Set-up of an inter service group on copyright issues, to be led by DG COMM, to regularly assess whether the measures taken are sufficient to mitigate the risk in a complex and rapidly changing technological and legal environment. Preparation of an action plan before end of 2009, including all necessary measures, from awareness raising and training to the drafting of common guidelines.	COMM, OPOCE, JRC, SG	New action
		Focus the resources available on improving the control structure in place for the management of the financial programs. In 2009, assurance will be sought via a specific internal audit assignment and ongoing monitoring by the operational services.	ECFIN, SG	New action
		New: Closely follow-up the delays in the implementation of the Schengen Information System II.	JLS, SG	New action

Financial management
Subject	Objective	Initiative(s) to meet the objective	Responsible service(s) and timetable	Progress made in 2008
Integrated internal control framework	9. Enhancing accountability by establishing a comprehensive integrated internal control framework in line with the requirements set out in the ECA’s opinions on ‘single audit’.	Implementation of the action plan towards an Integrated Internal Framework.	All services	Completed: In its latest report on the Plan20, the Commission reported that as at end-December 2008 the implementation of 13 actions was completed and that the three remaining actions could not be implemented or were being taken forward in other ways. The Communication noted significant progress in strengthening internal control systems during the mandate of the present Commission. A part of this positive impact was attributed to actions launched before 2005, but there was evidence that progress was significantly accelerated with the launch of the Action Plan in early 2006.
		New: Reinforce the accountability of Member States for the use of EU funds by revising the guidelines for the annual summaries to draw on the lessons learned, and continue offering support to the Member States.	REGIO, AGRI, JLS	New action

Ex-ante and ex-post controls	10. Improving the efficiency and strengthening accountability by ensuring proportionality and a sound balance between ex-ante and ex-post controls, and by further harmonization and better focus of ex-post controls.	Common guidelines on sampling methods and related level of confidence should be finalised.	Services concerned with the support of DG BUDG, ongoing	Completed Extensive guidelines on audit sampling in line with international auditing standards have been prepared in the Structural Funds to promote coherence in testing done by Member State audit authorities21. The Commission has provided guidance on best practice in the management of external audit framework contracts to ensure a consistency and high quality of audit results22. In the research area, the joint audit strategy set up in 2007 includes guidance on sampling. Based on the experience gathered from the research audit strategy and taking into account that not all elements of the approach are transposable to all areas, the Commission issued guidance to its services on sampling strategies in October 2008.
Accounts	11. Increasing responsibility and accountability at the level of the Commission as a whole by the signing-off of the accounts by the Accounting Officer and by improved quality of financial information.	The Commission will further strengthen its accounting processes and systems to improve the quality of the financial information and the respect of deadlines.	All services, continuous action with the assistance of the services of the Accounting Officer	Continuous action The European Court of Auditors expressed in 2008 for the first time an unqualified opinion on the 2007 accounting data of the Commission. The Accountant's report on the validation of local systems for 2008 confirmed that these in general are steadily improving. All systems which were subject to an in-depth evaluation during 2008, except one, were validated. Data from the accounting system indicate that late payments are tending to stabilise in number and value. In the face of the current acute economic crisis, the Commission will aim, by 1 October 2009, to make first pre-financing payments within 20 days from the signature date of the contract and a 30-day time limit where 45 days currently apply for other payments.

Human resources
Subject	Objective	Initiative(s) to meet the objective	Responsible service(s) and timetable	Progress made in 2008
Simplification	13. Simplifying procedures to increase both efficiency and employee satisfaction.	Based on a collaborative effort and consultation of all Commission staff, DG ADMIN prepared a Communication to the College enshrining the key principles of the simplification drive and proposing a detailed plan with 85 actions, to be carried out within well defined deadlines. This Communication was adopted by the Commission on 4 July 2007 and its implementation is ongoing	DG ADMIN, ongoing	Completed A report to Commission (SEC(2008)2309/3) stated that 48 actions have been fully or partially implemented and 3 have been abandoned (out of 85 identified actions) by July 2008.
Staff skills	14. Aligning resources and needs better to make sure that staff have the skills and qualifications necessary to perform their duties, in particular in areas such as financial management, audit, science, linguistics and IT.	Following the conclusions of the evaluation on the Strategic Alignment of Human Resources, various measures were carried out in 2008.	DG ADMIN, ongoing	Continuous action HR scorecard per month HR report with HR metrics Start of a follow-up evaluation to review HR processes
		The Commission will identify any shortfalls and communicate its specific needs so that they are promptly taken into consideration and included in the work -programme of the inter-institutional European Personnel Selection Office. Provision of specialised training and measures to improve the recruitment procedures and, in particular in areas where a shortage of skilled staff is identified.	DG ADMIN and EPSO, ongoing tasks.	Continuous action DG ADMIN carried out a comparative study on remuneration in which an assessment is also made of the competitiveness of the Commission for certain job profiles.
		The Commission will take measures to improve its Job Information System so that it enables the organisation to have a global view of its current human resources and to produce easily detailed analysis by corporate processes.	DG ADMIN in collaboration with DIGIT, SG and DG BUDG by end 2007.	Continuous action The e-CV project continued. In 2007, there were 3.250 e-CVs; by end 2008, here were 5.697. The matching tool to link job, vacancies and the electronic CVs was delivered for internal testing in December 2008.

Continuity of operations
Subject	Objective	Initiative(s) to meet the objective	Responsible service(s) and timetable	Progress made in 2008
Business continuity	15. Ensuring that the Commission is able to maintain business continuity in case of major disruption to its activities	The Commission will address the issue of the suitability of the data centre hosting IT systems and ensure that current reflections on the best IT governance arrangements lead to operational conclusions in 2006.	DIGIT, OIB and OIL in 2006 and in 2007.	Continuous action A multi-annual (2006-2011) strategy to improve the housing conditions for the Data and telecom Centres of the Commission has been developed and approved. This should lead to the most critical IT equipments being moved into professional data centre type rooms in a phased approach and to the refurbishing of air conditioning and electrical infrastructure in the JMO Data Centre room. Contracts for the rent of two new data centre type rooms in Brussels and in Luxembourg were signed. For the one in Brussels, the move was completed in February 2007 and, for the one in Luxembourg, by March 2007. A second room in Luxembourg only became available in late 2007 and needed preparation, so that actual moves into them only began in the last quarter of 2008. Procedures to secure a supplementary room in Luxembourg were ongoing at the end of 2008.

Приложение 4: Executive and Regulatory Agencies

(Council Regulation 58/2003 (Art 9.7)

In line with practice in most Member States, using agencies to implement key tasks has become an established part of the way the European Union works.