The updated ICF Policy and the ICF Operational Guide provide clarity on roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities in the implementation of internal controls for clustered and non-clustered processes. Additionally, the ICF Policy has been aligned with industry best practices, including the COSO (the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission) framework and the Three Lines of Defense model. The COSO framework describes what we do in internal control and the three lines of defense framework describes who does it. Both frameworks have been endorsed by the High-Level Commi ...
The updated ICF Policy and the ICF Operational Guide provide clarity on roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities in the implementation of internal controls for clustered and non-clustered processes. Additionally, the ICF Policy has been aligned with industry best practices, including the COSO (the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission) framework and the Three Lines of Defense model. The COSO framework describes what we do in internal control and the three lines of defense framework describes who does it. Both frameworks have been endorsed by the High-Level Committee on Management. Additionally, the ICF policy specifies: (i) the roles and responsibilities of staff at all levels of the organization in the achievement of internal control objectives, and the ways in which UNDP monitors and assesses internal control effectiveness; and (ii) the roles and responsibilities of participants in UNDP’s shared services delivery model.
The Operational Guide of the Internal Control Framework (“ICF Operational Guide”) serves as a supplementary document to the ICF Policy. Given the complexity of UNDP’s activities and the resulting breadth and depth of POPP content, the purpose of the ICF Operational Guide is to bring together the key internal control requirements included throughout the POPP to help UNDP offices implement effective internal controls in both clustered and non-clustered environments. Specifically, the Operational Guide: (i) articulates the key day-to-day internal control roles and their associated authorities, accountabilities, and responsibilities; (ii) describes at a high level some key process control points; and (iii) identifies the supporting technology roles (i.e., ERP), rights, and available tools to affect and monitor internal control implementation. A series of “Quick Views” have been added to provide more visual content, as requested by stakeholders. This version of the Operational Guide provides guidance on who executes internal control roles (or elements thereof) with respect to both clustered and non-clustered processes. Country Offices should follow the clustered or non-clustered guidance that is relevant to their process clustering implementation status.