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WALTER DEFFAA
The European Commission's recently appointed internal audit chief says his organization must continue to work toward modernization and progress.
IT HAS BEEN FIVE YEARS SINCE AN UNPRECEDENTED financial scandal led to the mass resignation of all 20 members of the European Commission (EC) - the executive arm of the European Union. In the wake of this chastening experience, a new commission led by former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi embarked on an ambitious program of reform. Its aim was to transform an organization with a reputation for financial irregularity and management incompetence into a world-class public administration.
A key part of this reform was an effort to revolutionize the commission's approach to corporate accountability and internal control. In 2001, troubleshooting Dutchman Jules Muis was called in from the World Bank as the first director general of the commission's then newly formed Internal Audit Service (IAS). Muis resigned in April 2004 and handed the reigns to Walter Deffaa, a 53-year-old German with 2o-years of experience at the commission.
In his most recent role as finance director of the commission department responsible for regional policy, Deffaa was managing one of the largest audit teams in the EC. Now, he is bringing that experience to his new role: consolidating the progress made by Muis and steering the commission's growing army of internal auditors through the next stage of reform.
Deffaa recently spoke with Internal Auditor from his office in Brussels, Belgium.
When the EC announced your appointment, it said you would be "consolidating" reform. Does that imply the pace of reform is slowing?
No. The reform is a continuous process. In the Prodi Commission, we made a quantum leap by redesigning the EC's financial management and control systems and putting in place new planning, programming, and performance management systems as well as modern human resources policies. Now that the new systems are in place, we have to make them work efficiently. In any organization, it is important and necessary to modernize. So it is my vision and the EC's that we consolidate and move forward in modernizing our organization - that is, continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness and keep up with technology and management innovation.
When Jules Muis left his post, he told...