Autonomous bodies must use scorecard for financial prudence: CAG
Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) K Sanjay Murthy on Monday said autonomous institutions should leverage tools like risk-control maturity scorecard (RCMS) to see whether financial prudence is being followed. Addressing a workshop, organised with central and state universities for improving control and governance, Murthy said tools like RCMS for higher education institutions are not an additional audit but a self-monitoring tool. He further said that there are around 1,400 autonomous institutions. “The number of autonomous bodies will further grow, and the amount of investments will also continuously increase. It was therefore imperative that tools like RCMS are leveraged to identify areas requiring attention,” Murthy said.
The workshop forms part of the consultative process for the roll-out of RCMS across autonomous bodies, beginning with 66 higher education institutions in the first phase of engagement with institutional leadership, aiming to build a shared understanding of the framework, its methodology and the expectations from institutions during the audit cycle. In their addresses, Secretary, Higher Education Vineet Joshi and Additional Secretary, Department of Higher Education Anandrao V Patil emphasised that the RCMS initiative represents a shift from reactive compliance to proactive risk management. They encouraged universities to actively engage with the framework and ensured to facilitate wider learning and support a continuous process of improvement in governance and internal controls of the HEIs. In his remarks, Deputy CAG A M Bajaj said that the primary responsibility for identifying risks and managing controls rests with institutional management. RCMS seeks to provide a structured framework to support and strengthen that responsibility.
