3.4 The Role of the Chief Executive
The Chief Executive has accountability to the Board for the overall organisation, management and staffing of the public body. He/she must devise and implement appropriate management structures and processes and must ensure the organisation has the necessary human capital for it to achieve its mission.
The key roles of the Chief Executive are:
Executive Management
- To assist the Board in developing the Strategy for the public body. This will involve devising alternative strategies by which the public body might achieve its purpose and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each for the Board;
- To devise and recommend a corporate plan which will allow for the full implementation of the Board's adopted strategies within the resources available;
- To devise and implement management structures and processes which will allow the public body to implement agreed corporate plans;
- To ensure that the public body has managers and staff with the necessary skills, knowledge, qualifications and experience to be able to implement agreed corporate plans;
- To lead and inspire the organisation to fully implement agreed corporate plans on time and within budget to achieve agreed objectives;
- To monitor carefully the implementation of plans, adjusting them as needs be;
- To ensure that the Board is kept adequately informed so as to be able to discharge its duty to monitor performance;
- To develop and maintain positive relationships with officials of the sponsor Department to understand Ministerial aspirations and to ensure that the Department understands the challenges facing the public body; and
- To develop and maintain an effective relationship with the Chair and to ensure an effective link between senior managers and the no executive Board members.
As Accountable Officer
Where a body manages its own budget, the Chief Executive will normally be designated as its Accountable Officer. The detailed responsibilities of the Accountable Officer for a public body are set out in a Memorandum from the Principal Accountable Officer (the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Executive) issued to the Chief Executive at the time of formal designation (normally on appointment). These include:
- signing the accounts;
- ensuring that public funds are properly managed and safeguarded;
- ensuring that assets are properly controlled and safeguarded;
- ensuring that proper financial systems are in place and applied;
- ensuring that arrangements have been made to secure Best Value;
- representing the body before the Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament; and
- alerting the Departmental Accountable Officer to circumstances where the Board is proposing to go against the Accountable Officer's advice on matters of financial propriety, regularity and/or value for money.
A full list of the specific responsibilities of your Accountable Officer is provided in the Memorandum to Accountable Officers of Other Public Bodies which is contained in the Scottish Public Finance Manual (see Annex 2: Further Reading).
What is the role of the Board in supporting the Accountable Officer?
The Board has an important role in assisting the Accountable Officer to discharge his/her responsibilities. Board members are collectively responsible for ensuring that the organisation adheres to strict standards of financial propriety, and complies with any financial requirements, in particular, those contained in the Management Statement and Financial Memorandum. The Board:
- considers and approves forward budget allocations and financial targets within key strategic and planning documents, such as Corporate and Operational/Business Plans;
- monitors the financial position against budget allocations and key financial targets and takes corrective action where required;
- approves high value, novel or contentious expenditure proposals, for submission to the Scottish Executive and Ministers for approval where appropriate;
- approves the annual accounts; and
- ensures that proper internal audit arrangements are established and maintained.
What can you do if you are concerned about the performance of your Accountable Officer?
In circumstances where there are serious concerns about the actions and performance of the body's Accountable Officer, the Board or the Departmental Accountable Officer can recommend to the Principal Accountable Officer that Accountable Officer status should be withdrawn or suspended. This would mean that the Chief Executive would be unable to fulfill their role and this would effectively terminate their position as Chief Executive.
The Effective Chief Executive |
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- Helps create the vision by providing technical support and advice
- Leads the development of alternative strategies for achieving the vision, ensuring creativity is allied to realism
- Leads the development of innovative plans to achieve the full implementation of agreed strategies
- Builds capable and inspiring teams and organises them into a fit for purpose organisation structure with management processes that provide for plan delivery
- Provides inspiring leadership to the public body to ensure the complete delivery of agreed plans on time and to budget
- Monitors organisational performance closely, keeping the Board appropriately informed
- Ensures operational/performance issues are quickly and effectively dealt with
- Delivers performance
- Maintains an ability to innovate and question the status quo even when he/she created it him/herself
- Fulfils all the responsibilities of being the public body's Accountable Officer
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