The Secretary-General has signed the first Statement on Internal Control for all operations of the Secretariat for 2020, marking an important milestone towards achieving greater accountability for results.  

The Statement on Internal Control is a public accountability document that provides reasonable assurance that the Secretariat operated under an effective system of internal control.

This is an important step towards a more systematic approach to managing control and risk.

The Financial Policy and Internal Control Service, in the Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance, led a major effort to document all high-level controls across the Secretariat, or risk control matrices, and review process flowcharts in functional areas.

Every entity in the Secretariat contributed to this change to strengthen the internal control framework. Each did an internal control self-assessment to review the effectiveness of their internal controls based on detailed activity-level and entity-level controls.  

These assessments and a review of them formed the basis for the Statement on Internal Control, which is available on the UN reform website.

It is the culmination of years of work, triggered by the adoption of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards.

While it had its genesis in financial reporting, the scope of the statement, which is based on the COSO Internal Control-Integrated Framework, was amplified to embrace operational and compliance objectives. 

This was done to support the Secretary-General’s management reform, especially the delegation of authority, and the commitment to transparency and accountability for results. The internal control framework will be reviewed and updated continuously.

Each year’s Statement on Internal Control will reflect on the specific areas that are identified as opportunities for improvement, such as these from 2020:

  • talent acquisition processes
  • learning skills and development
  • personal data protection and privacy
  • property management
  • maintenance of risk registers
  • advance purchase of air travel tickets
  • monitoring, evaluation, and oversight of third parties

As we strive to improve the Secretariat’s effectiveness, the Statement on Internal Control framework will hopefully become an integral part of the manager’s toolkit to ensure the optimal use of resources and to increase confidence in the Organization.  

For more information, please visit the Community of Practice or contact OPPFB-Internal-Control@un.org.