Internal Audit Findings in Cayman Islands DEH Overtime Enquiry

ArchiveOct 2, 2018

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To bolster capacity at DEH, two civil service leaders, Director of the Department of Vehicle and Equipment Services Richard Simms and the Manager of the Public Works Department’s Recreation Parks and Cemeteries Unit Mark Bothwell, were seconded to be Acting Director and Acting Assistant Director (Solid Waste) respectively. They continue to assist in these roles while recruitment is undertaken to permanently fill the posts.
For the past several months the DEH management team has focused on strict accountability and performance management to deal with the issues of poor attendance and unsatisfactory performance that helped to create the overtime overspend.
The team has also worked to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of solid waste collections, the area of DEH operations identified as accounting for nearly all the overtime expenditure. This approach has led to a reduction in overtime costs of some 80 percent over 2017 levels. We believe the success of these efforts has shown in improvements to the regularity of the waste collection service across the Cayman Islands.
Chief Officer Ahearn has updated heads of departments’ delegations to ensure that both the ministry and the senior staff have a clear understanding of their respective roles and responsibilities.
The Ministry has re-introduced internal monthly finance updates to regularise reporting from its finance team to other ministry managers. This also allows the finance staff to provide regular updates on departments’ performance against budget targets.
The Chief Officer has also taken steps to ensure there is a shared understanding of when matters should be escalated to the Chief Officer’s attention, and what sort of actions are required to prevent a similar situation in the future.

Published October 2, 2018