Contracts

Your existing contractual obligations can determine what you must and cannot do in the future, so you need some way of checking what they are and working within those limits.

 

Register of contracts

Check that you have a register of contracts, and that it is up to date. This is basically a list of agreements, and will include funding agreements, service contracts, supplier agreements, etc. Having a list helps you make sure that you meet your obligations for all of them. Without it, you'd fail to meet some contracts and suffer penalties of even get fined.

 

Governance

While you're at it, you might want some way of checking the governance process for establishing new contracts. For example:

1. Do you use standard agreements?
2. Who checks the agreements?
3. Could your organization be unfairly disadvantaged in the way new agreements are negotiated?
4. If you have a range of different contracts, how will you keep track of the differnet details?
5. What are the risks of current contracts? (For example, ar there loopholes? What scenarios could eventuate that are not unanticipated in the contract?)
6. What are the risks of failure to meet contractual obligations?
7. Do existing contracts create new business opportunities?