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Annual Legal Compliance Certification by Legal Compliance Officers
A. Forms
B. Guidelines for Completing the Annual Compliance Certification Process
A. Forms - Monash only
- Form B:
Certification by Supervisors of Designated Legal Compliance Officers (pdf,
29 KB)
-
Form A:
Certification by Designated Legal Compliance Officers (pdf, 28 KB)
-
Continuous
Improvement Form (Microsoft Word, 26 KB)
B. Guidelines for Completing the Annual Compliance Certification Process
- Legal compliance officers designated with overall responsibility
for ensuring the University complies with legislation in a
particular area are requested to complete Form A and return it to
the Executive Manager, Compliance by the last working day of January
each year.
- Supervisors of the legal compliance officers are requested to
complete Form B and return it to the Executive Manager, Compliance
by the last working day of January each year.
The certification form requires supervisors to attach further
information in cases where a shortcoming has been identified in the
compliance program for the designated area of law. The
Continuous Improvement Form is provided for this purpose.
Laws serve many purposes not least being that they regulate behaviour
thus allowing individuals and organisations to plan and conduct their
affairs with a greater degree of certainty than might otherwise be possible.
Therefore, compliance is an aid to good management, not an impediment. An
organisation that is not complying with a particular area of the law on an
ongoing basis will experience or can expect to experience at least one of
the following consequences:
- civil litigation by aggrieved clients, staff members or other
people;
- prosecutions by government regulators for breaches of the law;
- loss of reputation impacting on recruitment, market share, funding,
etc;
- deaths or serious injuries to staff, clients and others;
- inefficient operations;
- failure to attain strategic goals and operational targets;
- low staff morale.
Monash has always taken its legal and ethical responsibilities seriously
but the Audit Committee believes that the risk of legal non-compliance is
greater than ever before and that an annual compliance certification process
will prove valuable by encouraging relevant staff to focus more on:
- Promoting an ethical and positive compliance culture in relation to
the law and ensuring that Monash staff, students and stakeholders
obligated or protected by the law are aware of relevant laws,
regulations, codes and University policies.
- Identifying legal compliance risks for organization-wide structures,
systems and processes and facilitating the identification, assessment
and management of risks at the level of cost centres.
- The provision of generic policies, procedures, education and
training to guide the behaviour of staff, and where appropriate,
students and others.
- Facilitating the development of specific and targeted policies,
procedures, education and training at the cost centre level.
- Monitoring compliance with the law and related University policies
and procedures throughout the organisation.
Reporting
Officers designated with overall responsibility for ensuring the
University has complied with the law in a particular area or their
supervisors will be required to present a compliance report to the Audit
Committee on an annual or longer basis. It is therefore important for
officers and supervisors to retain copies of completed annual certification
forms (A and B) and to do so for five (5) years.
The University’s Executive Manager, Compliance will report to each
meeting of Audit Committee on progress by designated officers and their
supervisors towards achieving proposed remedial actions recorded on their
annual certification forms (A and B). This will ensure that a culture of
continuous improvement in relation to compliance activities is evident as
well as stated.
Compliance Program Continuous Improvement Form
This form is to be used by the supervisors of officers designated with
overall responsibility for ensuring the University has complied with the law
in a particular area. It is a supplement to certification Form B.
Those involved in this certification process are asked to note that:
- The law and its interpretation are dynamic and therefore an
organisation can never constantly be fully compliant.
- Good compliance practice is strongly linked to good management
practice because both are concerned with proactively pursuing continuous
improvements that will facilitate the achievement of objectives
efficiently and effectively rather than only reacting when things go
wrong.
- Part of any continuous improvement program involves benchmarking the
existing program against some standard in order that shortcomings can be
identified, remedial actions planned and improvements recorded and
reported over time.
Therefore, when signatories note shortcomings in their compliance
program on this form they are NOT stating that the organisation is not
compliant with the law or that they or their staff have not been diligent in
their efforts to create a culture of compliance within the organisation.
They are indicating that there is more that can be done to improve the
internal structures and systems necessary to support compliance and are
committing themselves over the following 12 month period to implementing the
remedial actions they have outlined on the form.
When completing the form be aware that:
- ·Numerous instances of a particular category of non-compliance are
invariably indicative of a systemic problem that will probably
necessitate improving some aspect of the compliance program for the
designated area of the law.
- Timeframes need not always be tight. As noted above, compliance is a
dynamic, ongoing process and parliaments, regulators and the courts
usually allow for its achievement within reasonable timeframes. Priority
should be given to remedial actions where the shortcoming in the
compliance program has resulted, or could result, in breaches with
serious consequences.
Sources of Information and Data
When completing the Compliance Program Continuous Improvement form
relevant information may be drawn from a range of sources. A key aid will be
the document entitled
Best Practice Guidelines for AS3806.
Other sources might include:
- AS3806-1998 The Australian Standard® for Compliance Programs;
- risk analyses by the designated officer and supervisor;
- internal or external review findings and recommendations;
- internal (e.g. branch or unit) records system;
- internal and external auditors’ findings and recommendations;
- client satisfaction surveys;
- regulators’ publications and web sites;
- professional networks and professional association publications;
- client complaints captured by the internal complaints handling
system; and
- the Executive Manager, Compliance.
Quarterly reports will contain valuable information and data,
particularly that part of the report dealing with areas of potential
non-compliance (the risk register). However, quarterly reports do not cover
all areas of a compliance program.
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